Blast From The Past: British Champions' Day

Frankel has featured in Blast From The Past before when we looked back at his Lockinge Stakes victory but we make no apologies for including him again this week, particularly as he has two performances from Champions’ Day worthy of inclusion. His win as a three-year-old in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes came on the very first British Champions’ Day at Ascot, while twelve months later he bowed out unbeaten in fourteen starts for Sir Henry Cecil when winning the Champion Stakes on the same card. It shouldn’t be forgotten, by the way, that, Frankel had also won on the ‘old’ Champions’ Day card at Newmarket – held for the final time in 2010 - as a two-year-old when the Dewhurst Stakes had formed part of the programme.   

For the inaugural £3m British Champions’ Day at Ascot – the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes with £567,100 became Europe’s richest mile race - Frankel was a ‘gift from the gods’, as Racehorses put it, for the organisers.

‘Frankel never looked in any trouble, settling well and quickening to take over from Bullet Train two furlongs out before drawing away, still keeping on strongly pushed out almost to the line.’ Producing another 140-plus performance, Frankel won by four lengths and three and a half from Excelebration, himself a top-class miler, and Immortal Verse who had beaten Goldikova in the Jacques le Marois.

British Champions’ Day 2011 was blessed with fine autumn weather and good to firm ground, but underfoot conditions were in complete contrast when Frankel returned for his swan-song in the Champion Stakes the following year. Not that that seemed to dent public confidence in Frankel even though his participation was only confirmed after some of his connections had walked the track on the morning of the race.

‘Frankel looked tremendous, probably in the best shape we had ever seen him…and he started at 11/2-on despite the concerns over ground conditions and the fact that he was up against two of the best middle-distance horses around. They were the previous year’s winner Cirrus des Aigles, the best horse in France who was barred from the Arc because he is a gelding, and the Eclipse Stakes winner Nathaniel, who had been an intended runner in the Arc until being ruled out by a temperature.

‘Unlike some of Frankel’s previous races, in which most of the pleasure had been derived from witnessing a sublime demonstration of his superiority, the Champion Stakes turned into something more of a competition than a demonstration…He drew almost alongside the leaders Cirrus des Aigles and Nathaniel with two furlongs to run, looking as if he could take it up when his jockey wanted. After edging ahead of Cirrus des Aigles, however, Frankel had to be ridden at the furlong pole to assert himself – a very rare sight for him – and was then pushed along to win, with a little in hand, by a length and three quarters.

‘The remarkable scenes that followed Frankel’s tenth Group 1 win, and ninth in succession, provided a fitting farewell for a horse described afterwards by his worringly frail trainer, barely able to raise his voice above a whisper, as ‘the best I’ve ever had, the best I’ve ever seen, I can’t believe that in the history of racing there has ever been better.’