Eaves a real hit on day that is bigger than many think

If you're talking numbers, forget the 41 that everyone mentions. Think 14,000 or seven million, those are the ones that best sum up what this day really means.

Ayr Gold Cup day and the three-day festival that it climaxes mean an awful lot more than that regularly-trotted-out fact that no Scottish horse has won the country's biggest Flat race for 41 years, dating back to Roman Warrior's success at the height of Rollermania in 1975.

That 14,000 is the approximate crowd drawn to a Saturday that is the last hurrah of summer for a seaside resort that, as is the way of these things, is never at its finest in the last part of the year.