Passion remains at Derby but empty spaces among Epsom spectators are growing

A yellow weather warning put a lid on the walk-up attendance on the Hill at Epsom on Saturday, and though the Derby itself avoided the worst of the rain, when it did finally arrive, about half an hour after the big race, it sent many spectators scurrying for an early exit. At the end of a three‑month period with historically low rainfall, it was horribly bad luck.

But there was still something else missing throughout the afternoon at what was once Britain’s greatest public sporting event. Aidan O’Brien put his finger on it, albeit obliquely, after Lambourn’s all-the-way victory in the Classic. “Chester [where Lambourn trialled for Epsom in the Chester Vase] is a great place for putting an edge on a horse,” he said. “It wakes them up, there’s a great atmosphere there.”

He’s right. There is. But the buzz that gave Lambourn his first taste of a big-race atmosphere in the tight confines of the Roodee was sadly lacking when he arrived at the much broader expanse of Epsom. There were simply not enough people there to generate the background hum of noise and excitement that, even a decade ago and whatever the weather, was there from the moment you parked your car or walked out of Tattenham Corner station.

The paid attendance at Epsom on Saturday was 22,312 – a 17% drop from the 26,838 on Derby day in 2024 and nearly 60% lower than the 53,177 record attendance for Galileo’s victory in 2001, which seems likely to remain the century’s highwater mark until the turn of the next one. From 2002 to 2006, the average was a respectable 47,000, but the crowd of 40,694 in 2007 was the last to reach 40,000, and the underlying rate of decline has accelerated since Covid.

The attendance on the Hill and against the inside rail has mirrored the decline in the stands. When I made my first trip to Epsom in 1987 to see Reference Point make all the running under Steve Cauthen, it was scarcely possible to see a blade of grass on the infield. The scattering of punters there on Saturday was pitiful by comparison, while just 11 double-deckers were lined up on the rail, where there would once have been dozens, from early in the home straight.

Racing fans enjoy the Derby on Saturday, albeit in fewer numbers than the dense crowds of the 1980s. Photograph: Sam Mellish/Getty Images

It looks and feels very much like a generational shift in the appetite for a day out at Epsom. The days when the east end of London would move, en masse, to Epsom on Derby day, including tens of thousands who made the journey on foot in the days before rail, are never coming back, but all across the capital Londoners have simply lost the habit too. The past three attendances at the Derby have all been below the 30,000 tickets that Leyton Orient sold for the League One playoff final a couple of weeks ago.

Turning things around promises to be a gargantuan task, though it is one that Jim Allen, Epsom’s new general manager, is approaching with gusto. The aim is to start at a local level, reintroduce the tens of thousands of people living within a few miles of the track to the unique piece of sporting heritage on their doorstep, and then spread the message further afield.

Allen has first-hand experience of the build-up to the Kentucky Derby, from the clock at Louisville airport that starts counting down to post time for the next one as soon as the winner crosses the line, to the parades, firework displays and gala events in the week running up to the first Saturday in May.

Louisville, admittedly, has a population of more than 600,000 and every last one of them will be aware from infancy that something out of the ordinary takes place at the city’s racetrack on the first Saturday in May. There are 10 times as many within 30 miles of Epsom, but the percentage of Londoners who even realised that it was Derby day this weekend, never mind that it is possible to watch it for free, will have been tiny.

Even in the gathering gloom ahead of the storm on Saturday, however, there were brighter moments when it was possible to appreciate how much the Derby still means to the sport. Most obviously, it was in the delighted astonishment of the 24 owners of Lazy Griff, the 50-1 runner-up, who had all paid less than £5,000 for their share. Their investment has already been repaid several times over, but the achievement, the simple fact that their horse had finished second in the Derby, was all that mattered on Saturday.

It will be a long, hard road back even to reach the attendance and buzz of the early years of the century, but for as long as that sense of passion and reverence for the Derby remains alive somewhere, there is still hope.