‘Timeform Racehorses of 1949’ described Abernant as ‘without question the fastest horse in training’. Indeed, the grey son of 1841 Derby winner Owen Tudor was one of the few horses to be rated the best of his generation by Timeform at two, three and four years and his Timeform Annual Rating of 142 remains the joint-fifth highest in the history of the respected ratings organisation.
Bred and owned by Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Macdonald-Buchanan and trained by Noel Murless, Abernant tasted defeat just three times in his 17-race career. He was beaten, through inexperience, on his two-year-old debut in 1948, through lack of stamina, hardly bolstered by his free-going style of racing, in the 2,000 Guineas in 1949, and famously suffered a shock defeat by the year-younger Tangle, who was receiving 23lb, in the King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1950.
The winner of five races as a juvenile, including the Middle Park Stakes, over 6 furlongs at Newmarket, Abernant was considered ‘not certain’ to stay the one-mile distance of the 2,000 Guineas, but was nonetheless sent off the heavily backed favourite for the Newmarket Classic. After a thrilling duel on the Rowley Mile, Abernant was just outpointed by the 10/1 chance Nimbus, who won by a short head.
After the second defeat of his career, Abernant was raced exclusively at sprint distances and proved to be something of a revelation. In 1949, he won the King’s Stand Stakes, July Cup, Nunthorpe Stakes and King George Stakes and, notwithstanding his reverse in the King’s Stand Stakes the following year, won the latter three races again in 1950. By modern standards, the one race missing from his résumé is the Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp, but that contest was not inaugurated until 1957, so at the time of his retirement in 1950 there was, as Murless put it, ‘nothing left for him to win’.