Excess all areas: How the British sporting summer turned into one never-ending booze cruise

From Goodwood to Henley, and Ascot to the Ashes, a collective and chaotic inebriation has taken over the grandstands of our summer sports, writes Jim White. It’s an endless source of shame

It is the great unspoken of our festival of whacking balls, racing horses and paddling boats: alcohol underpins it all ( Nick Potts/PA)

The slope on the footpath leading down from Ascot racecourse to the railway station is not exactly what you would call vertiginous. Tour de France riders are unlikely to regard it with trepidation. Yes, there’s a bit of an incline, but rope and crampons, it might be thought, are not required.

But at the end of a day’s racing during last week’s Royal Ascot meeting, it looked like the final few yards in the ascent of Everest.

A woman in a flowing summer gown had fallen at the top and was lying on the tarmac, cackling as her friend filmed her squirms and rolls. Further down, a bloke in full top hat and tails – quintessential Ascot regalia – was clutching the fence, inching his way slowly downwards towards the station. Nearby, a woman wearing the kind of fascinator Princess Beatrice might describe as a touch “elaborate” was walking sideways, stopping after each slow, pained step to yell abuse at her partner for not organising a taxi.