Great Expectations For Frankel May Be Realised
In the long history of thoroughbred breeding in Britain, no stallion has retired to stud carrying higher expectations of success than unbeaten champion Frankel (Galileo).
Few, if any, have been given better opportunities with the support of big numbers of high quality mares each season since he covered his first book in 2013 at Juddmonte’s Banstead Manor Stud where he now commands a fee of £125,000 and also covers a limited book to Southern Hemisphere time each year.
Frankel’s oldest Northern Hemisphere-time foals are now three-year-olds and while it is still too early to declare him a future champion sire he has made a very promising start, results in recent days suggesting he is well on the way after a string of stakes winners – Eminent, Rostropovich, Lady Frankel and Queen Kindly – in a seven day period not to mention having his first winner in Australia when high-priced yearling purchase Merovee broke his maiden at Newcastle.
Soul Stirring, a dual Grade One winner in Japan of the Hanshin Juvenile Fillies Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) and the Yushun Himba (Japanese Oaks) (Gr 1, 2400m), is the best of Frankel’s progeny to date but he already has 11 other Group winners among his 13 stakes winners.
Most breeders understand the vast majority of stallions who go to stud will prove failures or at best moderately successful but the odds of achieving outstanding success improve sharply in the cases of champion racehorses like Frankel with superior female pedigrees, the physiques to match and those given the opportunities to serve large books of high quality mares.
A big (16.1hh), imposing individual who acted on all types of going, Frankel was the stallion prospect who possessed a dream combination of qualities, ranking as a champion at two, three and four years and earning Timeform’s all time highest rating of 147 in his final season of competition.
Unbeaten in 14 starts, Frankel captured ten Group One events; the Dewhurst Stakes (Gr 1, 7f) at two years, the 2,000 Guineas (Gr 1, 1m), Queen Elizabeth II Stakes (Gr 1, 1m), Sussex Stakes (Gr 1, 1m) and the St. James’s Palace Stakes (Gr 1, 1m) at three years and as a four-year-old he captured the Lockinge Stakes (Gr 1, 1m), a second Sussex Stakes (Gr 1, 1m), the Queen Anne Stakes (Gr 1, 1m), the Juddmonte International Stakes (Gr 1, 1m2f) and the Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 1m2f) in a remarkable racing career under the superb training and management of the late Sir Henry Cecil.
Little need be said here about Frankel’s sire, classic champion Galileo (Sadler’s Wells) who last week was represented by stakes winner number 254. Galileo is already assured of being champion UK sire of 2017 which will be his ninth title. Before he is finished, Galileo may challenge the even more remarkable achievements of his own sire Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer) who won a record 14 UK sires’ championships.
Frankel, his stakes-winning dam Kind (Danehill) and her illustrious father Danehill (Danzig), are all products of Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms.
While Kind won two relatively modest Listed races, she has proven a phenomenal producer, breeding not only Frankel but also his multiple Group One-winning brother Noble Mission (Galileo), Europe’s champion older horse in 2014 who now stands in Kentucky, Bullet Train (Sadler’s Wells), a Group-winning three-parts brother to Frankel and Noble Mission, and Joyeuse (Oasis Dream), winner of two Listed races among her total of five wins. Bullet Train retired to stud in Kentucky and has been shuttling to Bowness Stud in NSW for the past five seasons.
Kind is a half-sister to Powerscourt (Sadler’s Wells), twice a winner at Group One level and a sire, and to Group winners Riposte (Dansili) and Last Train (Rail Link) from Rainbow Lake (Rainbow Quest), winner of the Lancashire Oaks (Gr 3, 1m3f).
In tail female Frankel goes back to the noted broodmare Samovar (Caerleon), his seventh dam, winner at two years of the Queen Mary Stakes (now Gr 2, 5f), whose other notable descendants include Rustam (Persian Gulf) and his sister Zabara (Persian Gulf).
By a Northern Dancer (Nearctic) line sire from a mare by another Northern Dancer-line sire, Frankel is the best of many major winners resulting from the most dynamic bloodline nick of recent years, Galileo on daughters of Danehill, himself sire of a record 349 stakes winners,champion sire in Australia nine times, leading UK sire three times, twice champion sire in France and almost equally as successful as a maternal grandsire.
Linebreeding to Northern Dancer 3m x 4m and to Danehill’s dam Natalma (Native Dancer) 4 m x 5m x 5f are the dominant features of Frankel’s pedigree which is further strengthened by a 5f x 5f double of influential American champion Buckpasser (Tom Fool).