Adayar ended a 20-year wait for a Derby winner to go on and claim high summer’s all-age mile and a half championship, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes, when he beat Mishriff a length and three quarters at Ascot yesterday.

But to the list of supermarket staff, hospital workers and lorry drivers you can add winning racehorse trainers as Charlie Appleby had to stay at home self-isolating and miss the race as a result of the current ‘pingdemic’.

Great Derby winners have been few and far between in the last decade and the last to achieve this particular double was Galileo, one of the great sires of all time, in 2001. But yesterday’s race provided a welcome fillip for the Epsom Classic and though five runners — the anticipated rain did not even settle the dust so Wonderful Tonight was withdrawn — put it in the realms of purist territory, it was arguably the best King George for some time too.

Looking a picture in the paddock, totally laid back and, not unlike his sire Frankel, with a physique that did not suggest a boy among men in against the older horses, Adayar was quick out of the stalls in contrast to the eventual pace-setter Broome who had to be rushed up on the outside.

That lit Adayar up but he found his rhythm by Swinley Bottom and sat on Broome’s tail until William Buick sent him to the front two and a half furlongs out at the top of the straight.

Mishriff looked momentarily dangerous coming from the back under David Egan but a mile and a half is probably the limit of his stamina and he could never quite get on terms conceding 11lbs to the three-year-old.

Aidan O’Brien’s Love did not quite pick up as Ryan Moore or favourite backers hoped. In finishing a further length and three quarters away in third it brought to an end a sequence of four Group Ones across two seasons.

“It’s the first time for 20 years, since the great Galileo,” said Appleby. “I think he deserves all the plaudits. We thought it was a good Derby and so it’s turning out. The third (Adayar’s stablemate Hurricane Lane) has won the Irish Derby and Grand Prix de Paris.

“The ground wasn’t a concern. He’s a very good moving horse, not long striding. He turns his wheels over quickly so I wasn’t going to use it as an excuse if he’d been beaten.

“William’s a great jockey, a team player. He knows the horses, talks to the lads. I usually don’t speak to him twice a day but I spoke to him three times today. I kept telling him ‘he’s a big horse, jump to make it and something else will take it on. Ride him like he stays a mile and three quarters.

“It’s frustrating not to be there but I didn’t need to be. It made no difference. My job was done, I’ve a great team around me and the rest of it was putting a bow on it and sending him to the races.”

Adayar was Appleby’s first runner in the race but it was Buick’s second winner 10 years after Nathaniel. “We all thought it was a good Derby and that was confirmed today,” he said. “I’m very privileged to ride horses like him and Hurricane Lane – they don’t come around too often. He was doing it as he pleased. He’s a very big horse. When he was younger he wasn’t sure how to channel his power, now he knows how powerful he is.”

Adayar is now likely to be aimed at the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe. Hurricane Lane is heading for the St Leger and then Buick might have a decision to make if he goes to Paris too.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]