Fantastic Frankel
By
Stephen Dwyer
Is Frankel
really the best racehorse in the world ? Many flat enthusiasts believe him to
be. But is he really better than Big Buck’s ? Black Caviar ? The answer is; possibly,
but he certainly deserves to be rated in the top three, no doubt. Hard as it is
to compare the efforts of National Hunt against the speed and candour of the
flat, Frankel is one of the best colts to race since the great Shergar. Ahead
of last year’s Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot, Frankel was valued by a leading
Bloodstock firm at £100 million. Even then, the figure was said to be on the
conservative side.
The reason for
the stellar valuation is simple. Unbeaten in all of his nine starts, five of
them were Group One races, Frankel appears to have it all. Speed, strength and
a gruelling turn of foot that saw him win one of the most visually memorable
2000 Guineas ever held at Newmarket least season. The biggest price he has ever
started at was 7/4 on his racecourse debut and interestingly the horse to
finish second to him that day was the John Gosden-trained Nathaniel who would
go on to win the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes.
In October of
last year, Frankel was allotted a rating of 143 by Timeform. This was the
highest mark awarded by the organisation in over forty years and their fourth
highest of all time behind Sea Bird, Brigadier Gerard and Tudor Minstrel. Fittingly, Frankel is named in honour of the
late American trainer Bobby Frankel who was inducted into the Racing’s Hall of
Fame in 1995. Owned by Saudi Prince Khalid Abdulla, Frankel makes his seasonal
bow at Newbury in the Lockinge Stakes on Saturday May 19th. Also
entered in the Lockinge are the Aidan O’ Brien trio of Excelebration, So You
Think and Windsor Palace but over his preferred distance of a mile, Frankel is
likely to have little to worry about.
A best priced
4/9 for the Lockinge, Frankel's trainer has earmarked the Queen Anne Stakes at
Ascot and the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown as the races to target this season. A
cause for slight concern was a minor training setback in April when the four
year old colt suffered a superficial injury. This caused him to miss a week’s
training but even this is unlikely to affect his performance at Newbury. Frankel’s
jockey, Dungarvan native Tom Queally admitted he is excited to renew his
partnership with the Colt on Saturday and believes he will be a tough nut to
crack.
Queally won his
first ever classic in the 2000 Guineas last year when he famously said “He’s made a show of them. The one thing this
horse does is gallop”. Dubbed
“Frankel-stein” by the world media, not many people might know that Frankel is
inbred 3 x 4 to the stallion Northern Dancer, meaning that Northern Dancer
appears once in the third generation and once in the fourth generation of his
pedigree.
In what is his
last season in training, Frankel ‘s connections will be able to command a six
figure stud fee when he retires to stud. Given the colt’s ability and what he
has achieved to date, he may well retire unbeaten. The Lockinge will provide a
good indication as to how much he has trained on since last year but by all
accounts, racing fans are in for a treat when Fantastic Frankel takes to the
track at Newbury.
Timeform's
140+ rated horses:
145 Sea Bird II
144 Brigadier Gerard, Tudor Minstrel
143 Frankel
142 Abernant, Ribot, Windy City
141 Mill Reef
140 Dancing Brave, Dubai Millennium, Sea
The Stars, Shergar, Vaguely Noble.
Copyright - The Nationalist.
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