While Royal Ascot at York might have been and gone, Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson finds that racing on the Knavesmire still represents one of the highest points of a Northern summer.

TWO months ago, Royal Ascot brought its own unique blend of style and social occasion to York.

The movers and shakers of the British racing scene came, quaffed their champagne and left grumbling about the traffic problems on the A64.

The Northern racing fraternity, while genial hosts and willing participants in the five-day festival, were left feeling somewhat ostracised at their own event.

So yesterday, as the Knavesmire course staged the opening day of its own showcase Ebor meeting, those same racegoers were determined to reclaim centre stage.

Forget Royal Ascot at York, this was Yorkshire at York - and it was all the better for it.

From Leeds to Leyburn and Sheffield to Scarborough, they came to uphold the social and sporting fabric of the north.

At first glance, that fabric might have appeared all but identical to the identity and image being paraded at Royal Ascot.

The same hats were on display in the Ebor Grandstand - with ostrich feathers appearing to be the accessory of choice to this untrained eye - and the same city gents were holding court with their jugs of Pimms in the County Enclosure.

But, beyond the obvious similarities, York's Ebor meeting continued to celebrate the roots of racing in the North.

The old-timers were back on display - still more cloth hat than top hat - raised on a diet of summer nights at Ripon and winter weekends at Sedgefield.

The conversation around the pre-parade ring was more Stoute and Spencer than stocks and shares and the paddock, always the place where the socialites are separated from the sporting, was thronged from first race to last.

Yorkshire and the North-East are changing. Newcastle and Leeds are global cities with a worldwide appeal and, with the likes of the Baltic Art Gallery and the Sage leading the way, their centres are able to exert a cultural and economic influence that is already permeating throughout the rest of the region.

But the link to the North's rural past remains strong and horse racing continues to provide a valuable link between the farm and the finance house.

That is why Mick Easterby continues to transport his equine superstars from his Sheriff Hutton base in the same horsebox he uses to take cattle to the mart, and why Howard Johnson will pass up the chance of watching one of his Group One hopefuls in action to make sure his mule ewes are fed and watered.

To most at York yesterday, racing was more than an excuse for a day away from the boardroom. It was an integral part of country life.

Flat racing might be increasingly international in appeal - the success of Italian raider Electrocutionist in a heart-stopping Juddmonte Stakes provided evidence of that - and, at its upper end, the sport might be dominated by Dubai-based royals and Irish millionaires.

But, thankfully, it has retained the ability to include and enthrall the countryside locale that spawned it in the first place. And no amount of southern sneering is about to change that.