14 races. Never defeated, won all easily. 5 furlongs to 1 1/4 miles. Untouchable by the best of his generation. Named after a great trainer, trained by the greatest.
Well done, Frankel. Best horse I\'ve ever seen, better than Secretariat and all the greats that have followed that red horse.
Found these facts about Frankel published in the racing guide for today:
Frankel has won 13 races out of 13 races by an aggregate margin of 74½ lengths, an average winning distance of 5.7 lengths, winning £2,261,072 in prize money.
Race number 14, the QIPCO Champion Stakes, is likely to be his last before he retires to stud and if he wins by far the most valuable race that he has contested to date, he will collect another £737,230 in prize money.
294,000 racegoers have witnessed Frankel’s 13 victories, more than three times the number that attend a Cup Final at Wembley Stadium.
Frankel is officially the highest-rated horse in the world on a rating of 140, towering above the next highest-rated horse this year, his main QIPCO Champion Stakes rival, Cirrus des Aigles, who is rated 130.
His Timeform rating of 147 awarded after the Queen Anne Stakes is the highest in Timeform’s 64-year history. It puts him ahead of the likes of Sea Bird (born 1962, rated 145), Brigadier Gerard (born 1968, rated 144) and Tudor Minstrel (born 1944, rated 144), while Timeform only have Dancing Brave on 140.
After winning the Juddmonte International Stakes at York, Frankel surpassed the record for consecutive wins in European Group 1 races set by Rock Of Gibraltar 10 years ago. He has won eight Group 1s in a row (nine in total) and can make it nine in a row (10 in total) on QIPCO British Champions Day.
His starting price on his debut was 7-4, the only time he has ever been odds-against. His shortest starting price was 1-20 in this year’s QIPCO Sussex Stakes at Goodwood when he became the first horse in history to win that race twice.
Frankel is valued at a record-breaking £100 million (or about $160 million) as a future stallion and is expected to command a covering fee of around £100,000.
Frankel’s life began in box number five of the Foaling Unit at Banstead Manor Stud in Newmarket, Suffolk, where he was born at 11.40pm on 11 February 2008. He weighed 123lb (8 stone 11lbs) – a bit heavier than a Flat jockey. His height now is 163.8cm or 16hh 1/2 inch.
He was named after one of the greatest American trainers of all time, Bobby Frankel, who died in November 2009 and who trained very successfully for Frankel’s owner, Khalid Abdulla.
When Frankel arrived at Sir Henry Cecil’s Newmarket yard, he went into one of the barns used for yearlings. Towards the middle of his two-year-old career, he was moved to a “bigger and better” box. However, he did not like it and would not settle, so had to be moved back. The team attempted to move him again, later in the year, but the same thing happened. He clearly prefers his original box, which now boasts CCTV – a must when stabling a horse of such value.
He eats three feeds each day and snacks on English hay – older horses usually eat American hay, but this proved a little too rich for Frankel. For his main feed, he eats corn, alfalfa chaff and bran, and likes a carrot treat. He also has a calcium supplement to keep his bones in good shape. He eats more than any other horse in the yard – about 23lbs of Canadian oats per day, which is the equivalent of approximately 600 Weetabix biscuits.
He has the largest feet in Sir Henry Cecil’s yard and wears size 7½ shoes in front and size 7 behind.
