Even in turning for comfort to its most venerable race, British horseracing contrived to come up with further bad news. Telescope, rated the only serious home contender for the Investec Derby, will not line up at Epsom tomorrow week after disappointing in a crucial gallop at Lingfield on Wednesday. That leaves Libertarian as the only British colt not wholly dismissed by bookmakers against the unbeaten Irish favourite, Dawn Approach – and even he can still be backed at 20-1 after his shock success in the Dante Stakes at York last week.

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A new wildfire has threatened to take hold of a sport already busy beating down its smouldering steroids scandal. For a bureaucratic delay in Frankie Dettori's comeback from suspension, originally scheduled for Monday, was suddenly subject of fresh mystery.

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He would not have the class, surely, or the speed. He isn't even the right shape. But the sudden squall of hail prompted by his success here suggested that Libertarian, if nothing else, will introduce due grit to the British Turf's greatest race. For his shock success in the trial that honours the North's last winner – now 68 years ago – plainly qualified this big, dour brute as a fitting ambassador for Yorkshire in the Investec Derby a fortnight tomorrow.

Frankie Dettori has had 15 random drug tests during the last two months as he prepares to make his return to the saddle at Leicester on Monday. The jockey, banned for six months after traces of cocaine showed in a sample taken at Longchamp last September, told Channel 4 News of his sense of shame and humiliation. "I feel like Lance Armstrong," he said. "They come and knock on my door any time of the day."

If this was supposed to be the preliminary sketch for an Epsom masterpiece, then for now Liber Nauticus remains closer to an oil tanker than a dashing ocean clipper. Nonetheless she finds herself disputing favouritism for the Investec Oaks, bookmakers having taken an indulgent view of the heavy weather she made of her trial here.

With just four days still to serve, Frankie Dettori's first television interview since the start of his six-month drugs suspension will be broadcast on Channel 4 this evening. Though he has previously acknowledged succumbing to "a moment of madness", Dettori explicitly admits that he had taken cocaine before failing a random test at Longchamp last September.