Blast From The Past: Dewhurst Stakes

Frankel ended his first season with victory in the Dewhurst Stakes but that wasn’t his best performance as a two-year-old; that had come instead in the Royal Lodge Stakes at Ascot which he won by ten lengths. But his owner Khalid Abdullah had three other Dewhurst winners before Frankel, one of whom, Xaar, successful in 1997, put up a performance out of the top drawer at Newmarket, earning champion two-year-old status with a rating of 132.

1997 was the first year that Newmarket’s mid-October fixture, traditionally known as the ‘Houghton meeting’, was rebranded as ‘Champions Day’. Racehorses described the seven-runner Dewhurst as ‘a mouth-watering international clash’ which ‘looked sure to settle the ‘champion two-year-old’ title.’ ‘What couldn’t have been anticipated’, added Racehorses, ‘was that the race would reveal a champion of such supremacy.’

Xaar started favourite at 11/8 but most of his six rivals had plenty to recommend them. In betting order, they were: the unbeaten Daggers Drawn, winner of the Richmond and Champagne Stakes; Tamarisk, also the winner of all three starts, and impressive in a sales race over course-and-distance last time out; Central Park, who had won his last three races, including the Vintage Stakes; the Coventry Stakes runner-up Desert Prince; and the Aidan O’Brien-trained Impressionist who had won his last two, most recently the Futurity Stakes at the Curragh. The field was completed by the Clive Brittain-trained 50/1-chance Pegnitz who had finished second at Ascot on his only start.

It was Xaar who gave the race its international dimension. Trained in France by Andre Fabre, he was bidding to emulate his sire Zafonic who had been another of Khalid Abdullah’s Dewhurst winners for the same stable five years earlier. Xaar had followed a similar path to Zafonic before the Dewhurst, taking in the Prix Morny at Deauville and the Prix de la Salamandre at Longchamp. Zafonic had won both, but Xaar was beaten at Deauville before turning the tables on his Morny conqueror Charge d’Affaires in impressive fashion over the extra furlong of the Salamandre.

While Zafonic won the Dewhurst by four lengths, his son was even more impressive, winning it by seven, ‘quickening really well after being held up and outclassing his field to a remarkable extent. Front-running Tamarisk, who had the rest tacked down running into the Dip, was his closest pursuer at the line, two and a half lengths ahead of Impressionist and Desert Prince.’ Neither Daggers Drawn nor Central Park gave their running.

The visual impression of Xaar’s wide-margin was backed up by an outstanding timefigure. Regarding his 2000 Guineas prospects, Racehorses concluded ‘we shall be surprised to see him beaten at Newmarket.’ Zafonic, and of course, Frankel, went on to complete the Dewhurst-Guineas double for their owner, but Xaar’s essay also remarked, pertinently as it turned out, ‘that not every champion two-year-old lives up to the highest expectations at three.’

Xaar came into that category. He was beaten into fourth at odds on behind King of Kings in the Guineas (after making a winning reappearance in the Craven Stakes) and the nearest he came to winning another race was when beaten a neck in the Eclipse as a four-year-old on his final start, by which time he had joined Godolphin. Xaar hasn’t made much of a name for himself at stud, though one of his daughters produced this year’s Derby/Irish Derby winner Harzand.