Frankel streaks clear in Royal Lodge Stakes
The hype and the hope were turned into reality when Frankel proved that he is as good as many thought he was when he won the Group Two Juddmonte Royal Lodge Stakes at Ascot.
Frankel had been one of the talking horses of the season even before he won his debut in at Newmarket in August and followed up with an impressive-looking performance when he followed up by 13 lengths at Doncaster two weeks ago.
Frankel is a big, imposing colt and the market said that Frankel would impose himself on the rest of the field, but that is not a way of thinking for a man like Kieren Fallon. He was riding Klammer and he was going out with one, simple thought. “We’re out there to give him a race,” he said.
When the race started Tom Queally did not want Frankel to run his race too early, one of the reasons that he runs in a cross-noseband, and the jockey was happy to let Eskimo and Slim Shadey set the pace, which was not that fast.
Frankel was anchored at the back but it was not so much that Frankel was pulling to hard but the sheer exuberance of his ground-devouring stride demanded to be let loose. Queally kicked past the field on the home turn, with an astonishing burst of acceleration, to lead with three furlongs to go. If that took the rest of the field by surprise what happened next almost defied belief. By the time they hit the two-furlong pole Frankel was four lengths clear and from there the only question was how far he would win by.
By the winning post he was 10 lengths clear of Klammer, with Treasure Beach third, and if Frankel is not the champion two-year-old this will go down as a truly vintage season.
Henry Cecil had already said that Frankel was one of the best two-year-olds he had trained. Now he seemed even more certain. “He was very impressive,” he said, with a late contender for understatement of the week. “They didn’t go very fast which didn’t really suit him. He settled very well – he’s been settling better and he’s been improving. He’s been ticking all the right boxes and it was just a question of what happens on the day.”
What happened was that Frankel strengthened his stronghold-grip on the markets for both the 2000 Guineas and the Derby next year, but Cecil had been harbouring hopes each morning on the Newmarket gallops in recent weeks. “In the last two months he’s started to improve, improve and improve. He’s got a lot of talent and, in the way he works, I don’t think I’ve had a better two-year-old since Wallow.”
That colt went on to win the 2000 Guineas in 1976. “That’s a long time, that’s nearly 40 years,” Cecil said, which only underlined just where Frankel may rank.
However, two-year-old honours are really the stepping stone to the Classics and Cecil admitted to having doubts about whether Frankel will make up into a Derby contender. “I don’t believe in ante-post myself – a lot can happen between now and then – but I’d question whether he’d get the Derby trip. I really would question it.”
“The dam [Kind] was very fast and the female being the stronger s*x,” he said with that mischievous smile that told you that Cecil was back in his pomp “the dam’s side has come out a lot in him – although he’s Galileo who was a Sadler’s Wells horse.
“Bullet Train [Frankel’s half-brother] more of a mile-and-and-a-quarter horse, so it would be a question. He’s got a lot of class and he could easily be a Guineas horse and now we’ve got to decide whether to let him go for the Dewhurst of the Racing Post. Depends entirely on how he does from now until Newmarket.
“If I think he needs longer I’ll have to give it to him. But I’d rather, if possible finish him a bit earlier.”
One of the subtexts to this story is that Frankel carries the name of Bobby Frankel, the legendary American trainer who died from leukaemia last year. Frankel had been a trainer for Frankel’s owner, Prince Khalid Abdullah, and the naming of this colt is likely to become a poignant thread – given Cecil’s own battle with cancer - within the tapestry of next season if the colt can reach the heights of a Classic. “I knew Bobby very well,” Cecil said “Great character; tough and a great trainer.”
There are plenty who would say that of Cecil himself.
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