Security and smiles the order of the day as crowd gives peace a chance

The sun is shining, a royal wedding has already taken place, the FA Cup Final is still to come and there’s Group 1 action on the track. What is there not to smile about?

Yet there’s a distinct sense of trepidation lingering in the summer breeze at Newbury, a ‘hopefully this doesn’t go wrong’ type of feel and certainly not one commonly associated with the big days on the Flat.

To be fair to Newbury, the atmosphere is not their making, more a knock-on effect from a 50-man brawl at Goodwood two weeks ago and a smaller scale, if not any less unsavoury, scrap at Ascot seven days ago. Incidents that left racing with the sort of media coverage it has craved for years, but for all the wrong reasons.