Racing: History awaits Refuse To Bend

The Derby: Britain and US both dream of a Triple Crown as glory day dawns for the standard-bearers

The running of the 224th Derby on Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most emotional finishes in the history of the great race, the one where newly knighted Sir Gordon Richards won his first Derby at his 28th attempt on Pinza, beating the newly crowned Queen's candidate Aureole into second place in front of a record crowd. It was the climax to a week of nationalistic fervour, four days after the Coronation and five after the announcement of the conquest of Everest.

But go further back in time, to 1935, to find a unique sporting, rather than social, moment. On 5 June at Epsom, Bahram added the Derby to his 2,000 Guineas to set up the successful tilt at the St Leger that made him the 14th of 15 colts to take the Triple Crown.

Three days later in New York, Omaha won the Belmont Stakes to become the third of 11 winners of the US Triple Crown.

That has been the only year in which the rare treble has been completed on both sides of the Atlantic. On Saturday, there is the real possibility of a reprise. In the afternoon the 2,000 Guineas winner, Refuse To Bend, will be among the favourites for the Derby, and in the evening Funny Cide will bid to become the first horse since Affirmed 25 years ago to add the Belmont to his Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes triumphs.

The two horses represent the riches-and-rags sides of racing. Blue-blooded Refuse To Bend runs for the Zurich-based 92-year-old Dr Walter Haefner, a publicity-shy businessman and philanthropist who is ranked the 132nd richest man in the world, in the colours of his Moyglare Stud, near Maynooth in Co Kildare.

Funny Cide, a humbly bred gelding, cost $22,000 as a yearling. His owners, a group of 10 former schoolfriends headed by healthcare consultant Jackson Knowlton, include a retired school-teacher, an optician and a caterer, and travel to the races in a rented yellow school bus.

Their hero is the first really good horse that 65-year-old Barclay Tagg, who has a barn of just 20 horses in New York, has handled in more than 30 years with a licence. Refuse To Bend is one of some 130 in the care of Dermot Weld, 54, by any standards a master of his profession, at Rosewell House on the Curragh. He has won all his local Classics at least once, plus an Oaks at Epsom as well as the latest 2,000 Guineas, and, famously, is the only northern-hemisphere trainer to have taken the Melbourne Cup, a feat he has achieved twice. And there's a link with events across the pond on Saturday; he is also the only European to have won a leg of the US Triple Crown, having taken the 1990 Belmont Stakes with Go And Go, Refuse To Bend's cousin, in the Moyglare silks.

Since Nijinsky became the most recent horse to follow in Bahram's hoofprints in 1970, only two colts have won more than one Classic in Britain: Reference Point (the 1987 Derby and St Leger) and Nashwan (the 2,000 Guineas and Derby) two years later.

But since Affirmed, 15 horses have taken two Triple Crown races, Funny Cide being the ninth to score in the first two.

The Americans try more often for assorted reasons: their races span a narrow range in terms of distance (nine-and-a-half to 12 furlongs) and time (five weeks) and there is now a $5m bonus offered to a Triple Crown winner. The St Leger, more than four months after and three-quarters of a mile longer than the Guineas, has fallen out of fashion with the breeding tail that increasingly wags the racing dog, but instead of backing tradition, racing's authorities have come up with a £5m bonus for a spurious midsummer series.

Funny Cide, who has become New York's homespun hero (with interest stimulated by the subplot of a ludicrous suggestion that his Churchill Downs victory was achieved with the help of an electrical goad held by his jockey), will draw a capacity crowd to Belmont as he faces his most difficult task. Should Refuse To Bend triumph on Saturday, he will almost certainly go on to Doncaster to bid for immortality. And that is the sort of occasion that will stir the public pulse and revive interest in the sport, not a contrived alternative.

Irish-trained horses have won the last three Derbies, and as far as the betting market goes, the Celtic tiger continues to roar.

Refuse To Bend and his compatriots Brian Boru, leading Aidan O'Brien's challenge for an unprecedented Derby hat-trick after Galileo and High Chaparral, and Alamshar, representing the Sinndar team who won in 2000, are vying for favouritism at around the 7-2 mark, with everything else in double figures.

The race is regarded as open, hence the glut of runners, and possibly inferior in quality to this afternoon's French version at Chantilly, regarded as a formality for the unbeaten Dalakhani. But its worth should not be judged yet; it is a beginning, not an end. The trials eliminate the no-hopers, but the standardbearer for a generation will not be identified until his pace, balance, stamina, acceleration and resolve pass muster over Epsom's switchback mile-and- a-half on Saturday.

With rain forecast to give him the ease in the ground he favours, Refuse To Bend, foaled on St Patrick's Day, can continue the Irish hegemony in the blue riband, now Europe's richest race with a prize fund of £1.47m, and set up the Triple Crown dream. Chester Vase winner Dutch Gold and 2,000 Guineas third Norse Dancer may prove best of the home side.

Two years ago, Imagine took the Oaks back to Ballydoyle. In the 225th renewal of the premier fillies' Classic on Friday, O'Brien's belief in Yesterday, another Irish 1,000 Guineas winner named after a Beatle song, can provide a replay at the expense of Hanami and Hi Dubai.

Montgomery's selections

The Derby
1 Refuse To Bend
2 Dutch Gold
3 Norse Dancer
4 Brian Boru

The Oaks
1 Yesterday
2 Hanami
3 Hi Dubai
4 Casual Look