AEPCC

Lester Piggott won the Derby nine times, then spent a year in prison for hiding £3.25 million of income from the taxman. In October 1990, at 54, he came out of retirement. Twelve days later he lined up in a $1 million race in New York, and with half a mile to go he was still near the back. He won by a neck. The race was the 1990 Breeders' Cup Mile at Belmont Park. The horse was Royal Academy, for his old ally Vincent O'Brien. Piggott said it was the biggest single purse he ever won: "No moment in my career ever tasted sweeter." Three years earlier, in October 1987, he had stood in Ipswich Crown Court. Customs and the Inland Revenue had run an investigation codenamed Centaur. The court heard that his riding fees and bloodstock money had gone into accounts under different names in Switzerland, the Bahamas, Singapore and the Cayman Islands. The judge gave him three years. He served 366 days and lost his OBE. He kept riding until 1995. At 56 he won the 2,000 Guineas, his 30th British Classic.