The Mill Reef team reflect on his victory in the 1971 Derby

Hallum looked after the brilliant colt and rode him every day. He said: "I used to go and fetch them from the airport when Mr Mellon used to send them over. This particular year there was Mill Reef and there were three or four great big giant horses. I saw this little pony covered in paddock scars, and I thought this will do me, and that was it."

Former jockey Geoff Lewis talked about the first time he rode Mill Reef, he said;

“When I first rode him at Sailsbury, the trainer said to me, he’s been slow out of the gates, I don’t know how good he is because my two-year olds aren’t very good. Anyway, he flew out of the gate first out and I was five in front before you know it. So when I came back in I said to the trainer, “I hope you’ve got one quicker out of the gates than this, because if this is slow I don’t know what you’ve got!””

Mill Reef finished second in the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket but his trainer was convinced the step up to a mile-and-a-half was going to suit in the Derby

"I think I was driving to Epsom thinking he would stay because we had worked him over a mile and a quarter, and he had finished like a train. I thought he probably had a pretty good chance. The Derby is always a special race that any trainer would want to win. I would say that Mill Reef was the best horse that I have ever seen. He had such speed over five furlongs, and yet he could go for a mile and a half, it was extraordinary."