With Camelot looming tomorrow, and six fillies in the Investec Oaks today, Aidan O'Brien and his patrons at Coolmore have every chance of making it four wins from four British Classics this season.

A year after he proved unequal to the weight of patriotic expectation at Epsom, Carlton House last night did his duty on his return to action on the Betfair card at Sandown. His owner begins her Diamond Jubilee tomorrow by attending the Investec Derby as usual, and while Carlton House could manage only third when favourite for that race 12 months ago, his comeback in the Brigadier Gerard Stakes suggested that he could yet make the grade in elite company.

Camelot so bestrides the Investec Derby that some bookmakers now offer odds that would qualify him as the hottest favourite since Tudor Minstrel was beaten at 4-7 in 1947. Only 11 other colts were left in the race yesterday, four of them from the same stables in Co Tipperary, and he is just 8-13 with Betfred to win on Saturday.

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If some of the circumstances of her retirement seem fairly poignant, then at least Henrietta Knight has contrived a sequel that confounds convention in satisfyingly consistent fashion. For the trainer who won so many hearts in her oddball partnership with Terry Biddlecombe has arranged to transfer most of their horses to the care of another hobbling, plain-talking veteran of debilitating sporting triumph, in Mick Channon.

Matthew Kelly, known to everyone as Paddy, was born in Dublin on 6 January 1916. His father, Laurence, served with the Machine Gun Corps on the Western Front and was killed at Ypres in 1917. Paddy's mother, Ellen, remarried after the war – and Paddy, one of seven children, spent an idyllic childhood having Huckleberry Finn-style adventures with his brother Terry.

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One of the British Turf's most gratifying rituals is to observe the runners strolling around the parade ring before its greatest race. This time round, however, it may prove so revealing that the actual running of the Investec Derby could itself obtain a somewhat ceremonial quality. For if the herd leader is usually identified at the Epsom winning post, some subtle obeisance might be discernible even before the colts are saddled a fortnight tomorrow.

Yet again the strength in depth of the Classic generation at Ballydoyle is inviting invidious comparisons with the Turf's other superpowers. At Godolphin, in particular, a recent mood of renewal was abruptly suspended after both the first two Classics were won by their great rivals. Godolphin failed even to muster a runner in the 2,000 Guineas, while its two fancied fillies in the 1,000 Guineas both finished tailed off. The stakes will be uncomfortably high, then, when the unbeaten Mandaean measures his Investec Derby prospects in the Betfred Dante Stakes at York tomorrow. And there is commensurate significance, surely, in the fact that the imported colt will be ridden by another new recruit from France.

The track for all seasons comes to the rescue today, when the Classic trials at Lingfield are switched from a saturated turf course to the adjacent all-weather circuit. And while they duly lose much of their pertinence to Epsom, usually ascribed to the hill, for much the same reason they are arguably rather stronger than in recent years.

An odds-on favourite already bestrides the Epsom betting, and the flat-out success of Mickdaam in the trial staged across the mire here yesterday did nothing to alter that.

Those unlucky enough to have missed out on London 2012 Olympics tickets twice may discover their fortunes have changed after organisers announced they will be given first bite at the remaining 900,000 seats on Friday morning.

Whether you are a mouse, a man or an O'Brien, your best-laid schemes can go agley. Young Joseph of the latter ilk may have given Camelot an inch-perfect ride to take the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket on Saturday, but two days later at the Curragh he for once seemed to get the fractions wrong on one of the Ballydoyle older stars, St Nicholas Abbey.