After two poor crowds had added to the negative publicity of last year, Royal Ascot arrived at its iconic Ladies’ Day in desperate need of some good news.

Despite a day of pesky showers, it came with a bumper attendance of 74,172, the biggest since the course re-opened for business last spring.

Like most other sports, racing is event-based these days, and themes draw crowds even more than star performers. Ladies’ days and evenings have been adopted voraciously by courses around the country but Ascot, the original, showed here that its brand is still strong.

With questions being asked about budgets and loan repayments on the £200 million redevelopment, this was a timely fillip for Ascot. Ticket sales are good for the two remaining days of the meeting and some of the ground lost on Tuesday and Wednesday can now be regained.

The other diverting news off the track involved a remarkable betting plunge on the colour of the Queen’s hat. Paddy Power, the Irish bookmaker, has quoted this novelty market for some years and the alarm went up when clients began phoning their offices asking for £500 bets on the colour cream.

Untouched as an 8-1 shot all week, cream collapsed in the betting to 5-4 favourite on Wednesday night and the market was eventually closed when punters were still piling in at probitively odds-on prices. When the Queen duly emerged in cream, Paddy Power had a bill for £15,000 and there were dark mutterings about a Palace leak.

On course, the story of the day was also an odds-on winner - a second successive Gold Cup for the powerful Irish stayer, Yeats. Trained by the maestro that is Aidan O’Brien, Yeats was a comfortable winner from the fast-finishing Geordieland and his owners may now consider a second attempt at the Melbourne Cup.

Peter Chapple-Hyam, the Derby-winning trainer, saddled his second winner of the week with Winker Watson. The winning favourite in the Norfolk Stakes was a fifth success at the meeting for his jockey, Jimmy Fortune.

There were much bigger-priced winners, too, with Eddie Jock taking the Britannia Stakes for Michael Bell at 33-1 and Heron Bay a 20-1 winner of the concluding King George V Stakes.

Highlight of the fourth day is the Coronation Stakes in which the Irish-trained Finsceal Beo will try to add another group one success after winning both the English and Irish 1,000 Guineas.