Champions Day is bogey territory for the Irish - and that's unlikely to change

Cast your mind back a decade to British Champions Day II.

In 2012, as had been the case during the inaugural meeting the year before, Frankel’s class and energy triumphed in spectacular style. Heavy rain the previous night had rendered the ground as sodden as we have come to expect at Ascot in the middle of October, but Sir Henry Cecil’s brilliant colt elevated an occasion, which was still finding its feet, to the sort of stratosphere to which it aspired.

Frankel crowned his fabulous career with a 14th and final demonstration of unadulterated quality in the Champion Stakes, readily dismissing the previous year’s winner Cirrus Des Aigles to quell any lingering suspicion that he might not have the stomach for a slog in the mud. It was a crescendo few racing fans will forget, a giant of the turf signing off with a suitably superior swansong.