Harbinger rated the best in the world
So just how good is Harbinger?
He is now officially rated the best horse in world, after his breath-taking victory the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, but can he justify that evaluation?
Ascot celebrated the 60th running of the King George on Saturday and a run through the roll of honour provides a potent reminder of the company that this year’s winner, now joins.
After Harbinger had won by the unheard of margin of 11 lengths – beating the seven lengths that Generous won by in 1991 – Sir Michael Stoute was asked to place the victory in context. After nearly 40 years as a trainer, Stoute has a vast reservoir of experience to draw upon but the look on his face suggested that even he was struggling to comprehend the scale of the colt’s achievement.
The silence as he gathered his thoughts was an eloquent statement in itself and even when he tried to deflect comparisons with humour it only underlined the potential magnitude of Harbinger’s newly acquired status. “Well I didn’t see Ribot,” Stoute said in reference to the great Italian horse who won in 1956, the words thrown out with one of those volcanic laughs that signal a slackening of tensions now that victory had been secured.
Given that Ribot took this race as part of a 16-race unbeaten career which included successive victories in the Prix de l’Arc Triomphe either side of his King George win.
Assessing the merits of Harbinger requires a degree of separation simply because the way that he separated himself from a field that included four individual Group One winners was beyond anything that he had achieved in eight previous starts.
Taking it in isolation, he has attained a position at the top table of middle-distance champions.
First to weigh in with their opinions was Timeform who initially rated Harbinger on a mark of 142, but then dropped him to 140 on further consideration. To put that into historical perspective over the post-war era Sea Bird, the Derby and Arc winner of 1965, still stands alone on 145. He is 2lbs ahead of Brigadier Gerard and Tudor Minstrel who are regarded as the best milers of the era.
Then comes Ribot, top sprinter Abernant and flying two-year-old Windy City on 142, with Mill Reef, the winner of the Derby, Eclipse Stakes, King George and Arc in 1971, on 141.
Harbinger now places alongside Dancing Brave, Dubai Millennium, Sea The Stars, Shergar and Vaguely Noble on 1lb lower.
The official handicapper’s assessments only go back as far as the start of the international classifications in 1977 and the current handicappers do not like to rely on those early ratings too heavily for an historical prism through which to view what we see now. However, Phil Smith, the BHA’s head of handicapping, concurred with the view that we had seen something special.
“You’ve got to be very, very impressed,” he said. “He looked an improving colt before the race, all his performances this year were very progressive and I expected him to run a big race. I have to say I didn’t think he’d win – and I certainly didn’t think he’d win like that.”
Having rated Harbinger on 135, to put him well clear of any horse who has run on the planet in 2010, Smith explained the reasoning behind it. “We looked at the second horse, Cape Blanco, and imagined ‘what if harbinger had not been in the race?’ We had Cape Blanco on 119 going into the race and we took the view that Cape Blanco had replicated his 119. It meant that all the other horses had run below form – so you could argue that we were being a bit mean on Cape Blanco – but he was still beaten a h**l of a long way.
“It’s quite a big jump, we had him on 123 before that, but I’d be pretty confident that he’s that and he may well be better. We’ve got Harbinger 1lb below Sea The Stars’ end-of-season performance but Harbinger’s still got one, two or three more races to come. So we’ll see how the King George works out, we’ll see how Harbinger works in his subsequent races and it may well be that we have him as high, or higher than Sea The Stars.”
Putting Harbinger in the context of the international classifications Smith pointed out: “Looking back you’ve got Montjeu 135, Peintre Celebre and Generous 137 and El Gran Senor 138. And if you go back you’ve got Alleged and Shergar on 140 and Dancing Brave on 141.”
The only doubt is whether the King George, which Smith described as a “wow race”, is a one-off performance or the next step on Harbinger’s progress to racing’s pantheon. Seven years ago Hawk Wing won the Lockinge Stakes by 11 lengths, beating a quality field, but failed dismally in his sole subsequent run.
"He's got a h**l of a lot to prove,” Smith said of Harbinger. “It was a one performance. No-one could get any of his previous performances into the 130s, even though he looked to be climbing the ladder. We would want him to do it again before we can get him into the late 130s or early 140s. He's got to do something similar in the future.
"A lot happens to the subsequent form of Cape Blanco and Youmzain. We’ll see how they perform. Horses get ratings not just on the fact they win by long distances, but also on the subsequent form of the horses they beat. We’ve got plenty to look forward to before the end of the year.”
The race that offers the chance to prove Harbinger as the genuine article is the Arc and Smith feels that the race will test Harbinger in a way that the King George did not. “It was a six-runner race on Saturday and the race was run absolutely to suit him and he showed what he can do. It will be very different on Arc day. In October the ground may well be different, they’ll be a full field and we saw last year how difficult it was for the jockey to create a passage for Sea The Stars to show what he could do.
“It’s going to be a totally different state of affairs, so let’s see what he can do.”
And then we’ll see how good Harbinger really is.
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