Cyrname v Altior: the battle that might even have stirred the old duke

It was the 16th Duke of Norfolk, Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, who said, "There'll be jumping at Ascot over my dead body," and although it would have made an interesting alternative to an open ditch, thankfully Her Majesty's Representative did not lay down his life to make his point.

That was at the start of the Swinging Sixties, when all sorts of permissive behaviour was rampant. The course had already allowed standards to slip post-war by expanding its annual fixture list from the four days of the royal meeting and in 1955 it had taken the retrograde step of allowing divorcees into the Royal Enclosure. Who knew where the revolution might end?

The duke was still in charge when the gates were breached and the heftier, hairier denizens of the winter game – fans as well as the four-footed – descended on the royal turf.