As a three-year-old, he won the Derby before recording a famous victory over Brigadier Gerard in the inaugural running of the Benson and Hedges Gold Cup.

[3] Roberto was a bay horse with a white blaze bred by John W. Galbreath at his Darby Dan Farm in Lexington, Kentucky.

[6] At age three, Roberto began his season by winning the Vauxhall Trial Stakes at Phoenix Park Racecourse and was then sent to England to contest the Classic 2000 Guineas at Newmarket.

Piggott actually thought he had been beaten, while Rheingold's jockey, Ernie Johnson, said afterwards that the winning post had come one stride too late for his horse.

[10] The Derby victory, confirmed after a stewards' enquiry,[11] was poorly received by the crowd, many of whom felt that Williamson had been unfairly deprived of the ride.

Roberto returned to Ireland for the Irish Derby but produced a dismal[6] performance at The Curragh, a right-handed track, and finished twelfth of the fourteen runners behind Steel Pulse.

[13] In the inaugural edition of the Benson & Hedges Gold Cup in 1972, many racing observers believed that Derby runner up, Rheingold, would prove to be a better horse than Roberto – he had subsequently won the Grand Prix de St Cloud while Roberto had run poorly in the Irish Derby.

Vincent O'Brien took the advice of Roberto's owner John Galbreath, and flew in the Panamanian-born American jockey Braulio Baeza.

Riding for the first time on an English racetrack, according to 'Raceform', a leading publisher of U.K. horseracing information, "Braulio Baeza aboard Roberto was out of the stalls like a bat out of hell.

"[15] After disputing the lead with Bright Beam (entered in the race as a pacemaker for the absent Mill Reef) he opened up a clear advantage approaching the straight.

With Rheingold struggling, Brigadier Gerard emerged as Roberto's only serious challenger but after getting to within a length of the Derby winner the favourite could make no further progress.

He just said ‘you’re the rider, do what you think is best’, though he did say that if the pace was strong it would find out Brigadier Gerard in the last half-mile and he was right.”[19] Roberto ran in two more races in the autumn of 1972 but failed to reproduce his York form.