Which horse won the inaugural Derby at Epsom?

Boasting total prize money in excess of £1.5 million, of which winning connections collect over £882,000, the Derby is the most valuable and prestigious race run in Britain. Nowadays run on the first Saturday in June, over a mile and a half, on a left-handed, famously switchback course at Epsom Downs, the second jewel of the traditional Triple Crown has, inevitably, become the yardstick by which colts of the Classic generation are measured. Indeed, even in modern times, it is worth noting that the likes of Sea Bird, Mill Reef, Sea The Stars, Shergar, Generous and Reference Point, all of whom feature in the top twenty highest-rated horses of the Timeform era, which began in 1948, all won the Derby.

Of course, the Derby is the third-oldest of the five British Classics, having been founded in 1780, four years after the St. Leger, at Doncaster, and a year after the Oaks, nowadays run over the same course and distance at Epsom. The co-founders, Edward Smith-Stanley, Twelfth Earl of Derby and his dinner guest, Sir Charles Bunbury, a steward of the Jockey Club, supposedly tossed a coin to decide after which of them the newly-devised race should be named. In any event, the inaugural Derby was run on May 4, 1780, not over a mile and a half, but over the last mile of the old, two-mile Orbital, or Cup, Course at Epsom. It was won by Diomed, owned by Bunbury, and arguably the best colt since Eclipse, a decade or so earlier.