The French invade and Turner smashes the glass ceiling on a riotous day at Ascot

It wasn't quite the full brass band and fireworks of Thursday, and the betting industry was able to rest a little easier on its axis than when Frankie Dettori was bearing down on them with the look of Armageddon in his eyes, but Friday's Coronation Stakes still had a nation in raptures.

It's just that it wasn't England, or even Italy, and to tell the truth not quite the whole of France, but the tricolor flew for a brief but magnifique moment alongside the royal standard. Several tricolors, in fact, waved by a dozen hollering Gauls who had clearly arrived with the intention of showing the locals what they would be missing if they were to go ahead with their plan to sever ties with the rest of the continent.

With an admirably English sense of entente cordiale, the home crowd cheered Watch Me into the winner's enclosure like one of their own, or at least like a welcome visitor from a place most of them have been to and rather enjoyed apart from the snails. They may have been largely hoping for a jubilant eighth win of the week for Frankie on Twist 'N' Shake, or even a slightly less jubilant but far more heavily backed fifth for Ryan Moore on the red-hot favourite Hermosa, but this was a moment for stiff upper lips and magnanimity.