Frankel
Odds and Ends
“IHA lives a life of comfort.” The Kentucky Derby winner at Big Red Farm (via).
Azeri, Ginger Punch, Lethal Heat, Moscow Burning, Stardom Bound … Kate Hunter on the Yoshida brothers’ starry broodmare band (PDF).
But the horse will tell us what he wants to do. “It’s an absolute crock. Frankel has been saying all year I can do what YOU want me to” (via).
It’s not about the surface. What Dullahan really wants is distance. Given his one-run style, this makes sense. It doesn’t raise his prospects in any of the three Breeders’ Cup races he might enter, though.
East vs. West, Sid Fernando, March 2012: “… it’s striking that even cheaper dirt tracks in the East have lower overall rates than most anything out West.” Hm.
Frankel to Champion Stakes
It’s odd, how the most likely news can be the most underwhelming.
This Frankel development feels a bit like the Mosses announcing Zenyatta would race in 2010, after she was given a retirement party post-Breeders’ Cup Classic win … and then outlining the same campaign she’d run in 2009.
Addendum: Speaking of Frankel, Zenyatta and what-could-have, Marcus Hersh tweets, “Paris would’ve been biggest racing moment since Zenyatta’s 2nd BC Classic.” Ascot is now wondering where everyone who wants tickets will sit.
“If They Had Polytrack We’d Have Been There”
Juddmonte racing manager Teddy Grimthorpe:
“Prince Khalid loves the Breeders’ Cup and we would love to take Frankel to Santa Anita, Bobby Frankel’s home town — the emotional ties would be fantastic.
“But unfortunately the right race is not there — we are not going to race him on dirt. It’s a pity, because if they had Polytrack we’d have been there.”
No dirt. Even a $5 million purse and sentiment aren’t enough.
Super Frankel
“I suppose steer is the word, isn’t it?,” Tom Queally said to Racing UK analyst Nick Luck after riding Frankel this afternoon to his 13th win in the Juddmonte International at York (replay link; no video embedding allowed). It was the first time Frankel went beyond a mile in what’s been a smashing three-season career (take a moment to relish that — we’ve been watching him since he was a juvenile), answering the distance question that’s dogged the unbeaten colt. Confirmed! With a handride! Frankel is more than a brilliant miler — in the Juddmonte, he proved that he can turn on the speed at 10 furlongs as easily as he does at eight. And what acceleration — he ran the “furlong … between three out and two out … in 11.05 seconds, which equates to 40.73mph.”
The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe or the Champion Stakes are reportedly both possibilities for his next start, which is expected to be his last. In whichever race he ends his career, Frankel will surely be remembered as one of the greats, even if — as Chris McGrath wrote before the Juddmonte, with the obligatory caveats about second-guessing a horseman with the stature of Sir Henry Cecil — we’ll likely never know his bottom:
Plenty of people at York today will claim they are looking at the greatest racehorse in history. Hitherto, however, the only measure of Frankel has been the increasing margins by which he has humiliated Excelebration. Yes, he finally tries something different today, partly because the race is sponsored by Khalid Abdullah, the Saudi prince who will be retiring Frankel to his Juddmonte Farms at the end of the season. But Cecil anticipates running him only once more, again on Champions’ Day. In which case, he will leave us without beginning to approach the limits of his potential.
I hope they confirm his final race soon enough to make travel plans. We might not get to see the limits of his potential, but I’d like to see him, once, live.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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