The Derby is the race racing made it – and only the industry itself can save the Classic now

Navel-gazing over the dire straits of Flat racing's leading Classic has become a lamentable annual pursuit in both the preamble to Epsom and its aftermath. 

When you consider how attendance at the Derby, one of British racing's defining events which for so long was identified by its thronged enclosures, has more than halved from more than 53,000 in 2001 when Galileo launched his legacy to 22,312 last year, the soul-searching is understandable. 

Modern-day London is very different from when multiples of that figure from 25 years ago used to descend on the Downs, the cross-society exodus led by politicians as parliament shut down in honour of the occasion. And we aren't talking exclusively about ancient times, when The Times once observed of the 1795 Derby: "Almost the whole of what may be justly styled the ‘vagabond gamblers’ of London were present.”