Dee Ex Bee has guts to derail O’brien’s shot at Triple Crown

People always ask me how presenting racing compares to Premier League football. Well, Epsom on Derby weekend is as intense as any football match.

With the crowds packed in on both sides of the track, the noise and the buzz, it is like being at one of those steep old grounds: a Highbury or an Anfield.

Today has everything: pageantry, glamour, a carnival atmosphere, and the world’s most famous Flat race. The Derby is the ultimate test for a thoroughbred, and that is because Epsom really has no right to be a racecourse.

They climb from the start to a distance higher than Nelson’s Column, then sharp left and freewheel down the hill, and then when you hit the straight, that has a massive camber right-to-left which throws you down to the rail.

Why would you make half a ton of racehorse do that? It is more like one of the rides they have at the fairground here than a normal track.

But that is also what makes the Derby so special. To win you need athleticism, balance, guts, stamina: the lot.

Saxon Warrior, of course, is the one everybody is talking about. Aidan O’brien told me the other day that this horse could be very special indeed.

He is so tractable that he wears a plastic bit rather than a metal one, and he ticks one of the boxes right away, which is to settle early. When he won the one-mile Racing Post Trophy as a two-year-old everyone thought he was a certainty to stay the mile and a half in his Classic season. But the way he won the 2,000 Guineas, he was like a seriously good miler, loads of speed, looked mustard. He has

‘My heart will be with Saxon Warrior but stamina has to be a concern at such a short price’

never been beyond a mile and to win a Derby you need to stay every yard, and with the rain we have had, Saxon Warrior’s stamina must be a question mark. He has the dreaded draw in stall one to overcome as well.

I do hope he wins like Shergar, though, and sets up a tilt at the Triple Crown. It has not become fashionable to go for the St Leger because of the view that winning over a mile and three quarters will devalue a horse at stud. No horse has won the Triple Crown since Nijinsky in 1970. But John Magnier and Coolmore love their history, love the romance of it. They are students of the game. And they would also have a score to settle after their horse Camelot was denied his Triple Crown in 2012 by surprise winner Encke.

It would be great for racing if Saxon Warrior could go for the Triple Crown. Our sport needs stories that capture the attention of the wider sporting public, which is partly why we at ITV were so thrilled to win the Bafta recently for our Grand National coverage.

My heart will be with Saxon Warrior, but stamina has to be a concern at such a short price.

The horse I am backing, each-way, is Dee Ex Bee. He is the only one in the field who has won on this unique rollercoaster. Nothing has gone right for him in his two races this season but I spoke to Charlie Johnston, whose father Mark trains the horse, and he was adamant that we can expect more in the Derby.

A couple of those Ballydoyle horses will go off at 100mph, and I would love Dee Ex Bee and Silvestre De Sousa to sit just off the pace and for the champion jockey to then say, ‘OK, catch me if you can’ as they round Tattenham Corner. If Saxon Warrior mows him down and sets up the Triple Crown dream, then good luck to him, and good luck for racing.