All Hail Enable's Eclipse

Enable’s win in the Eclipse was beautiful. Very calm, very collected. Not visually as impressive some of her other wins – I harbour a real soft spot for her demolition of the Yorkshire Oaks field in 2017, where she thumped five lengths into them at a trot. Nor quite as thrillingly gritty as her 2018 Arc, or Breeder’s Cup Turf. Her grim determination to hold off Sea of Class and grind Magical to dust are possibly her best performances, even when we account for the kicking she gave to the top class herd running in the 2017 King George.

In fact, just pause a moment, and repeat the names of the horses she beat in that race to yourself:

Highland Reel. Ulysses. Jack Hobbs. Idaho.

That lot won an Eclipse, a Juddmonte International, an Irish Derby, a Sheema Classic, a Coronation Cup, a King George and Queen Elizabeth, a Breeder’s Cup Turf, and two Hong Kong Vases between them. Idaho should have added a St Leger as well. Quality, through and through. And she pulped them.

So clearly this Eclipse wasn’t her best victory. Not the same calibre of opponent. It is not the one that you would automatically pick to tell future grandchildren about.

But then again, maybe you should.

A lot was against her in this race. It was two furlongs under her ideal distance, after a long layoff, against horses who had been on the go for a while and were probably at the peak of their seasonal form. Magical, her Breeder’s Cup nemesis, was ahead of her at the 1 mile 2 pole last year. For that reason, I personally had a question mark about her speed.

Was she quite as quick as the others? If there was no pace and she got boxed in, would she have the gas to get up and win? Coolmore were running two – Hunting Horn to block and foil, Magical to snatch victory. Aiden O’Brien is possibly the best trainer in the world, but he has a habit of running half a cavalry squadron in a lot of races. I can’t decide whether this is thuggish cunning or laudable genius, given the number of times that the Coolmore legions bump, block and obstruct other horses in big races. This is not to say that Coolmore should not run their horses. Of course they should. The Coolmore also rans are good enough to be in the race on their own merit. 2019 Derby case in point. It is just that whilst their winner is usually a true champion, their also rans create havoc for everyone else. Qabala got a hell of a bump in the 1000 Guineas this year, which ruined her race. Would the same happen to Enable at Sandown? Would she have enough to see them off?

We all know now that she did have enough. The win was comfortable, classy, in a well-run race. More than just the class though, was the sheer professionalism. Enable oozed it. Frankie oozed it. The whole of the Gosden team must have professional competence coming out their eyeballs.

In spite of the challenges outlined above they delivered Enable in magnificent style. First plaudits go to her groom, the vets, farriers, work riders and the maestro himself, John Gosden. It is not easy to get a horse through three full racing seasons looking so well. It takes hours of exercise, of grooming, of hand mixing feeds, of shoeing, of getting in 45 minutes early to a working day that starts at 5am, just to let her have a pick of grass. Enable was a picture on the day, strong, lithe and gleaming in her coat. She looked calm but focussed. That is an achievement which should be celebrated.

Maybe it is easier to keep fillies sweet than it is with colts. This time last year Gosden highlighted how Cracksman was getting distracted by the siren song of fillies in the pre-parade ring. But even so, Enable looked so sweet. So good, in fact, that she changed how I think about confirmation and bloodstock. Everyone in the racing game has an archetype, a picture in their head of what the perfect racehorse should look like. Previously, mine was Frankel in his burly, middleweight boxer days in 2012. He had freakish power in his shoulders. Enable looks different, a bit leaner, less of a raging bull. She has a lovely kind eye, a beautiful head and charming big ears that always seem pricked at the racecourse. She’s always looked good.

But God above, the way she stood on Saturday. Her attitude, her fitness, her poise. She now has to be the last word in how we think about middle-distance confirmation and conditioning. They don’t just flop out of the womb like that. That is a horse that has been matured. People have worked on her. I couldn’t see a single fault. Mechanical perfection. A perfect temperament. A masterpiece of Sistine chapel proportions. All hail Clarehaven stables.

Secondly, her breeder, Prince Khalid Abdullah. If everyone in the racing game was as wise and as sporting as Khalid Abdullah, we would have no need of stewards. Our horses would be better bred. This praise is merited on two counts. In running her again this season, the Prince has shown himself to be a true hero. It would have been easy to retire Enable last year. She has nothing left to prove and there are very few races worth winning left for her to win. But she has been kept going to try and win her third Arc, her shot at immortality. That is inherently sporting. The whole point of breeding and owning racehorses is to run them. We are enthralled by the glory of the running horse, not the sound of a cash register going ‘Kerching’. Fundamentally, the Prince gets it, understands the point of racing. He has allowed the world the opportunity to see a priceless jewel run a few more times. He is a hero.

Furthermore, on her dam’s side, Enable is the product of three generations of Juddmonte breeding. That is more than 50 years of effort. Buying success is easy. Breeding success takes skill, luck and money. Juddmonte have all three, and we get to watch the results. To have built Juddmonte over decades, and then to breed a champion like Enable is a triumph. So all hail Prince Khalid Abdullah too.

Thirdly, her jockey. In the early part of this decade, Frankie looked washed up and finished. That business with leaving Godolphin, and then the coke. I felt he looked miserable and tired at the races by 2014. Then he hooked up again with John Gosden. Gosden decided to employ Frankie at the height of his wildness in the 1990s, and together with Barney Curley, helped to settle him down and turn him into a champion jockey. Now Gosden has saved him again, giving him Golden Horn in 2015, and a string of other champions since then. Frankie cut down the volume of his rides, got his confidence back, started to enjoy the job again. I’d argue he is probably the best he has ever been.

On Saturday he rode a blinder, one of a number of recent blinders. I’ve really appreciated his riding this season. His riding is clean and crisp, and he places his horses so beautifully. The classic Frankie ride is lovely. He pops them up with the pace a couple of horses back, in what some people call the ‘box seat’ and I call ‘Lane Two’. Imagine a 400m runner in the Olympics. Each runner has his lane, with the runners in the higher lanes having to run further around a wider bend. By starting horses well out of the gate, and nabbing that slot just off the rails, Frankie saves his mounts ground. If he is being clever, he straddles Lane One and Lane Two, blocking horses from challenging on the inside and making sure he has racing room if he needs to cut to the outside. The advantage is most pronounced off a bend into a short straight, like at Ascot, where there is less time for a recovery in the straight if the bend goes wrong (it was no surprise that Frankie dominated Ascot 2019). As horses go around the bend, they fan out a bit as they cope with the turn, horses at the back forced wider and sometimes being jostled. In Lane Two or Three, the horses have a turn which isn’t too tight nor too wide. They stay balanced, and have the option of going back towards the rails or wider if they need to overtake. If the horse isn’t fit, all this counts for nothing. But if they are fit and fast, they have every chance to win.

On top of this, Frankie is judging pace better than ever. Horses are not being driven to the front too early nor too late. Again, think athletics, or listen to Mark Johnston, or read Tesio. Everything is on pace. Racing is simple, cover the distance in shortest time. The faster you run, the more tiring it is. Think about Roger Bannister and the four minute mile – to run the quickest time you want a fast even pace, with no bobbing and weaving, or big accelerations. Accelerations fuck with legs. This is why interval training is so effective, because you accelerate repeatedly, putting stress on both your anaerobic and aerobic capacities, driving them to a higher threshold by running quicker.

Back to horses. Most horses have one big acceleration in them. Most of the race, you want a fast, efficient cruise. So judging the pace of a race is crucial. You need to know if you running fast enough to be near the edge horse’s ability, but not so fast that you are beyond it. Take the North American 1 mile record, set by Najran at Belmont Park in 2003[1]. He covered the distance in 1:32.24, or 92.24 seconds. This works out to 11.53 second per furlong. A jockey must know how quickly his mount is going, and not use his big acceleration too early or late. If you’ve just covered a furlong anywhere under 11.53, kiss goodbye to winning the race on most horses. You have gone too fast, and burned the beast’s energy too soon.

A classic sign of a jockey who is in poor form is erratic pacing. Jockeys lose their confidence, push horses on too early to go for the win, or leave it too late. They start to doubt the clocks in their heads. Frankie’s pacing is back to its brilliant best.

Placing and pacing. Enable’s Eclipse was a brilliant combination of the two. Straight into Lane Two, then Lane 3 as the whole field shifted off the rails. A nice even gallop to let her use her fast cruising speed. Back into Lane Two around the bend, and then a slight rest into the straight. Every other jockey started banging away at their mount’s heads at that point. Frankie sat still as the pace wound up. Kept her beautifully balanced. And then he released her, hands, heels and a waving stick enough for a comfortable winner against good opponents.

Sometimes watching Frankie is like watching a blackjack dealer. He won’t win every hand, but if he consistently finds the slot in Lane Two and calls the pace correctly, well just you watch. The results roll in. He keeps making the right decisions. Riding is such a cerebral game. All hail Frankie.

Maybe this is the race we should tell all our grandchildren about. It is not going to be an epic tale. But it exemplified some of the best work done in flat racing and breeding that has ever been done. Breeder, trainer and jockey, at the height of their powers, creating one of the best fillies of all time. This is how to run a horse. All hail.

[1] http://www.equibase.com/about/northamericanrecords.cfm