The most famous of the five British Classic horse races, the Derby Stakes was co-founded in 1780 by Edward Smith-Stanley, Earl of Derby and Sir Charles Bunbury and named after the former as the result of a (probably apocryphal) coin toss. Notwithstanding interruptions for the two world wars, when a substitute race, dubbed the ‘New Derby Stakes’, was staged at Newmarket, the Derby has taken place on Epsom Downs ever since.
Of course, the Derby is a Group 1 contest, intended to test the class of three-year-old colts, who compete at level weights, and, theoretically, fillies, who receive a 3lb weight-for-sex allowance from their male counterparts. However, it is worth noting that no filly has run in the Derby since Cape Verdi, who was beaten favourite in 1998, and none has won since Fifinella. In any event, the nature of the Derby means that long-priced winners are typically few and far between.
That said, in 244 runnings of the Epsom Classic, so far, three winners have been sent off at treble-figure odds, although the last of them was over a century ago. In 1898, Jeddah, trained by Richard March and ridden by Otto Madden, belied odds of 100/1 to win, narrowly, by three-quarters of a length and, a decade later, Signorinetta, trained by Odoardo Ginistrelli and ridden by Billy Bullock, repeated the feat with a rather more convincing two-length win. The third and final 100/1 winner was Aboyeur, trained by Alan Cunliffe and ridden by Edwin Piper, who was awarded the race following the disqualification of the favourite, Craganour, in 1913; his victory in the so-called ‘Suffragette Derby’ was overshadowed by fatal injuries suffered by Emily Davison. At the other end of the scale, the shortest-priced winner in the history of the Derby was the hitherto unbeaten Ladas, trained by Mathew Dawson and ridden by John ‘Jack’ Watts, who, in 1894, made short work of just six rivals at prohibitive odds of 2/9.