Racing: Problems of Derby profile highlighted by Murtagh

There was a time when Parliament adjourned for Derby day and the winner of the Grand National was announced in both houses. Those in charge at Epsom are keen to get the great Flat race back into if not political, at least public consciousness, but yesterday Johnny Murtagh, who has ridden to victory in two of the last three runnings, just about summed up, in word and deed, the steepness of the gradient to be faced.

"Football is so popular now, and there are so many other sports too," he said at a media morning to launch the countdown to the 224th running of the Blue Riband, now 44 days away. "It's said the Derby has been in a bit of a decline but racing has no special right to assume people will come to it, there has to be a bit of an effort put in. If people do come and experience it they'll realise just what a special sporting occasion it is."

And then, before the first race of the year on the timeless Downs was run, he left to go and watch Manchester United face Real Madrid.

Although racing, for a variety of social reasons, no longer holds the wider public in thrall, there is no doubt that the Derby is the race that every professional wants on his CV and, after Franklin Gardens' narrow success here yesterday, the dream for Mark Tompkins' small Newmarket yard is still running. "It cost us £200 to enter him as a yearling," he said, "where else could you buy this excitement for that money?"

Murtagh, 32, is, obviously, a huge fan, and not just because his victory on Sinndar three years ago was a catalyst for an upsurge in a career that had once seemed threatened by weight and personal problems.

He recalled yesterday how Shergar's victory in 1981, when he was 11, had fired his imagination. "I didn't know then I was going to be a jockey, but I can still picture this gorgeous horse floating along, winning by miles, ridden by Walter Swinburn, an 18-year-old kid not much older than me," he said.

On 7 June, Murtagh will be aiming to follow last year's success, on the Aidan O'Brien-trained High Chaparral, with Alamshar for the Sinndar team of John Oxx and the Aga Khan.

The colt, currently the market leader, will next appear at Leopardstown on Sunday fortnight. "I did compare Alamshar with Sinndar, because like him, he is a laid-back type, lazy at home, but one who comes alive on the track," Murtagh said.

"But beyond that, it is not yet right to compare them. The trials have hardly started and although we may know more after Leopardstown, it is the big day that counts. The Derby is the proving ground, the race that sets the standard."

O'Brien will be going for an unprecedented three-timer in the Derby (he sent out Galileo in 2001) but, like Murtagh, is pragmatic at this stage. But he seemed to have narrowed down his entry of 30 to perhaps seven. "Everything is very much up in the air until we see what happens in the trials," he said via a telephone link to Epsom yesterday.

"Horses like Brian Boru, Alberto Giacometti, The Great Gatsby, Powerscourt, Catcher In The Rye, Roosevelt and Balestrini are all possibles and if Hold That Tiger runs a big race in the Guineas it is well possible that he might go to Epsom."

The Derby, with a £1.2 million purse, is now Europe's richest race. But the Epsom managing director, Stephen Wallis, is fully aware that being a big fish is not enough if the pond remains small. "Sport is now commercial and we have to deliver to our sponsors global coverage in markets that are important," he said.

"It being shown live in Japan matters to Vodafone, and running it on a Saturday and incorporating a pop concert gets us crowd number which we are having now to limit."

But if Wallis has a grasp of one aspect of modern real life, a comment yesterday may have confirmed the perception that some of those at the sport's helm have yet to move into the 21st century. It was probably unwise to refer to the travelling denizens of the infield on Derby day as "gippoes".