Ryan Moore leads, the rest follow as York's far rail is in danger of becoming fashionable again

Does anyone else remember a time – perhaps it's just me – when most Flat races were run along a rail or at least in reasonable proximity to one? Round-course races would follow the innermost line. Big-field handicaps up the straight would split in the middle and two large groups would muddle their way towards either side of the track.

We all have to be careful when dredging up generalised memories from more than ten years ago, but that's how I remember things when I first started taking an interest, with much less of the unsupported wandering about in the middle which is such a feature of the modern British Flat race. That's one reason why the outcome of the Yorkshire Oaks was so pleasing.

Wednesday's action had shown that the far side of York's straight was, at the very least, not a bad place to be. And yet the field for the fillies' and mares' Group 1, on emerging from the final bend, did that familiar thing of wobbling out into mid-track rather than sticking to the rail. Why, oh why?