Anyone with even the most passing interest in horse racing has probably heard of Frankel. Bred and owned by Khalid Abdullah, Frankel carried his famous green, pink and white silks to victory in all 14 races between August, 2010 and October, 2012, including ten at the highest Group One level. He started favourite on all 14 starts and odds-on favourite on all bar his narrow, but comfortable, winning debut on the Newmarket July Course.
Named after the late Robert ‘Bobby Frankel, five-time winner of the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Trainer, Frankel established his superstar status in the 2,000 Guineas in 2011. Sent off at odds of 1/2 or, in other words, the shortest-priced favourite since Apalachee was turned over at 4/9 in 1974, Frankel made all the running at a ferocious gallop and passed the post six lengths ahead of his nearest rival. By October, 2011, the son of Galileo was already the fourth highest-rated Flat horse in the history of Timeform, with a rating of 143 and the following June, after an 11-length demolition of old rival Excelebration in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot, became the highest-rated Flat horse since Timeform ratings were first published in 1948, with a rating of 147.
The emergence of Frankel provided an appropriate swansong for hist trainer, the late Sir Henry Cecil, who died of stomach cancer in June, 2013, at the age of 70. One of the most successful and popular racehorse trainers since World War II, Cecil thrived during the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties – he was, in fact Champion Trainer ten times between 1976 and 1993 – but spent most of the Noughties in the doldrums. In February, 2007, he revealed that he had been receiving treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma for the previous nine months.