The announcement on Sunday that Desert Crown, last year’s Derby winner, would miss the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot next week after suffering a “minor setback” was a considerable disappointment for all concerned, not least since it arrived just 48 hours after his surge to clear favouritism for the showpiece event on Wednesday’s card following the news that Frankie Dettori had been booked for the ride.
Since we only have the bookies’ word for it, it is, of course, entirely possible that the “gamble” on Desert Crown in the latter part of last week was more of a defensive manoeuvre on their part and involved very little actual cash. But even before it emerged that Richard Kingscote, the colt’s Derby-winning rider, had been “jocked off” in favour of Dettori, the hype machine was at full throttle, as rumours emerged of a scintillating exercise gallop by the four-year-old in Newmarket on Wednesday.
