Which horse holds the course record for the Derby?
The record for the widest winning margin is the history of the Derby still belongs to Shergar, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, who sauntered to a 10-length victory in 1981. However, the one-sided nature of that renewal, which led commentator Peter Bromley to exclaim, ‘You need a telescope to see the rest!’, resulted in a rather pedestrian winning time of 2:44.21.
To avoid any confusion, the fastest winning time in the history of the Derby was the 2:26.60 clocked by Dante in 1945, but that was in a substitute race, known as the ‘New Derby’, which was run at Newmarket, rather than Epsom, during and immediately after World War II. On the recognised Derby course at Epsom, which features steep undulations, a tricky, left-hand turn at Tattenham Corner and a pronounced camber in the home straight, the faster winning time was the 2:31.33 recorded by Workforce in 2010. Trained, like Shergar, by Sir Michael Stoute, Workforce also won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp later in his three-year-old campaign and
received the Cartier Champion Three-Year-Old Colt Award in 2010.