All was right with the world when the under-rated Teenoso provided Piggott with his record-breaking ninth Derby win

The victory, aboard the under-rated Teenoso in 1983, came 30 years after the iconic Sir Gordon Richards had finally won his first Derby at the 28th attempt on Pinza, denying the Queen’s Aureole in Coronation week.

“Teenoso might not have been my classiest Derby winner, but he was certainly my easiest,” wrote Piggott in his beautifully published book Lester’s Derbys.

As a two-year-old, Teenoso’s record was modest. Unplaced on his debut, and also in Doncaster’s Ribero Stakes, he then finished fourth on his final outing of an unpromising 1982 campaign.

The Geoff Wragg-trained horse only came to wider prominence when winning the April Maiden Stakes at Newmarket under Steve Cauthen, the top American jockey who had made such a successful transition to British racing. The same partnership then franked the form in the Lingfield Derby Trial on a course comparable to the undulations of Epsom Downs.

With Piggott’s then trainer Sir Henry Cecil having no Derby runner in 1983, the build-up to the race was dominated by the annual speculation over the identity of the legendary jockey’s Epsom mount – and whether the race would go ahead after an unseasonably wet May prompted fears about the track being unraceable because of waterlogging.

Piggott, who won his first Derby on Never Say in 1954 a year after the emotion of the Richards victory, quietly ruled out several well-fancied mounts before Teenoso impressed him sufficiently during one of those early morning gallops.

He would use these gallops, always shrouded in secrecy to the chagrin of the racing press, to test the stamina of his possible Derby contenders to the limit ahead of the mile-and-a-half Epsom race, and often to the annoyance of trainers like Vincent O’Brien, who wanted their thoroughbreds ridden with restraint.

With the 1983 General Election days away, comedian Eric Morecambe captured the country’s mood when proclaiming: “In a recent opinion poll, Lester Piggott came out top as the person most people would like to see at No 10. It’s what is known as a gallop poll.”

Teenoso – owned by Hong Kong-based shipping and insurance broker Eric Moller – was backed into 9-2 favouritism for the 23-runner race because of Piggott’s status as the ‘housewives’ favourite’.

The jockey takes up the story. “Knowing that stamina was his forte, I had him out of the starting stalls quickly, and got him to settle in about third place,” he said. “Going down to Tattenham Corner, we were still travelling easily in third, one horse off the rails, behind the outsiders.

“At this point, Teenoso was going so easily that I was able to take a look over my right shoulder to see if anything was likely to come from off the pace – always a difficult proposition in such heavy going – and was reassured by what I saw. They were pretty well all flat to the boards.

“Once we straightened up, I knew there was no point in hanging around. Teenoso would stay all day and would gallop all the way to the line, so I just let him go and set sail for home.”

The winning time – two minutes, 49.07 seconds – was testament to the heavy going and the slowest since Common prevailed in 1891. Back in second was Carlingford Castle. He had been a first Derby ride for a young Mick Kinane, who would go on to win the race on three occasions, most famously with Sea The Stars in 2009.

Piggott was unperturbed when he heard afterwards that Carlingford Castle and Shearwalk, back in third under Walter Swinburn, had both encountered difficulty negotiating Tattenham Corner – he pointed to the emphatic nature of the three-length winning margin. Of his nine Derby victories, only St Paddy (1960), Empery (1976) and Teenoso had won with so much in hand. Not even icons like Nijinsky, Sir Ivor and The Minstrel had prevailed with such ease.

The maestro’s 36th and final Derby ride came in 1994 when Khamaseen was fifth behind Erhaab. However, Piggott’s record of nine wins and four seconds will never be equalled.

As for Teenoso, the Derby form did not look rock solid initially – he was beaten in the Irish Derby on unsuitably fast ground before finishing third in the Great Voltigeur Stakes at York. As a four-year-old, however, he won the valuable Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud in France before beating champions of all ages in an epic running of the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. It was his last race.

Yet the last word on Teenoso’s Derby win belongs to Sporting Life columnist Tony Morris who wrote after the horse’s Epsom win: “God’s in his heaven, Lester’s won the Derby and all’s right with the world!”