Sir Henry Cecil’s three-year-old Frankel will put his unbeaten record and his mantle as one of the best racehorses of modern times on the line at Goodwood on Wednesday.
In the Sussex Stakes he takes on his elders for the first time, aiming to follow up his contemporary Nathaniel who upstaged the likes of Workforce and St Nicholas Abbey in Saturday’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.
The Group One showpiece looks like being a match race with Frankel being taken on by Richard Hannon’s star four-year-old Canford Cliffs, winner of this Group One 12 months ago.
Hannon’s miler turns up with all guns blazing, having lowered the colours of France’s superstar mare Goldikova in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot.
Bookmakers have Frankel as the marginal favourite at a general priced 5-6 with Canford Cliffs at 5-4 and the only other two runners daring to take on the big two, Rajsaman and Rio De La Plata, at 16-1 and 28-1 respectively.
Frankel triggered an avalanche of plaudits with his mesmerising runaway success in the 2000 Guineas to take his career record to six wins out of six.
He made it seven from seven at Royal Ascot, albeit with a display that fell short of the brilliance he had shown at Newmarket.
At British racing’s HQ, Frankel had been allowed to bowl along in front and had the Classic sewn up almost from the moment he burst out of the stalls.
At Ascot he justified his cramped odds of 3-10 – the shortest-priced favourite in the St James’s Palace Stakes since 1947 – but only just, holding off the fast-finishing Irish raider Zoffany.
Form experts Timeform reckon Frankel will coast home on the picturesque Sussex Downs if he replicates his 2000 Guineas running, but may struggle if he runs up to his Ascot mark.
Kieran Packman, Timeform’s spokesman, told sportinglife.com they have Frankel 10lbs (4.5kg) clear of Canford Cliffs, equating to a 10-length margin of superiority.
“Frankel’s figure comes from his extraordinary performance at Newmarket in the Guineas, which saw him given a master rating of 141,” Packman explained.
“His St James’s Palace success at Royal Ascot was some 18lb (8kg) below that exalted level, arguably chiefly because of the tactics employed that day, and there remains a nagging feeling that a series of such efforts could end up telling against him as the season goes on.”
Hannon believes Canford Cliffs has the ammunition to halt Frankel’s momentum.
“Frankel is a very good colt, but we think Canford Cliffs is as good as we have had here,” he told his website.
Jockey Richard Hughes echoed Hannon’s confidence, saying: “Frankel is a brilliant three-year-old and probably as good a miler (1600m) of his age as I have seen, but Canford Cliffs has improved so much since last year and, for me, he is far away the more straightforward of the two.
“They went off very fast at Royal Ascot and Frankel settled – I sat second on Dubawi Gold and could not live with the pace – but I can’t see where the pace is going to come from at Goodwood, and I will be surprised if Tom Queally does not make the running on Frankel.
“However, Canford Cliffs is a bit like Sea the Stars in that he’ll only do enough.
“Sometimes you are not certain whether he is going to change gear and then he explodes into overdrive, and I don’t think that there is a horse in the world that he won’t go by.”
AFP AAP TURF
