John Gosden’s star three year old filly Enable won Ascot’s mid-summer showpiece, the Group One King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, in fine style today. Racing prominently throughout, she took up the running just over two furlongs out and from that point the result never looked in doubt and she came home 4 ½ lengths clear at the line.
The runner-up, the Sir Michael Stoute trained Ulysses, came with a promising run and looked set to challenge at one stage but the filly had the upper hand and she stayed on strongly through the soft ground and rain-sodden conditions to take the prize.
After the race winning jockey Frankie Dettori paid tribute to those who’d help him fight back from a recent injury much more quickly than doctors had expected, allowing him back in time to take the ride on the filly he’d steered to victory to an Epsom and Irish Oaks double earlier in the season. He also described Enable as a ‘superstar’ and there were few who witnessed the race that would be prepared to argue with him.
Enable is a daughter of Nathaniel, himself a son of Galileo, out of a Sadler’s Wells mare called Concentric who Andre Fabre trained to win a Listed race in France in her three year old year. Nathaniel had won this race as a three year old and was also trained by Gosden, who mapped out a possible tilt in the Yorkshire Oaks as Enable’s next target, before suggesting that they’d then look at the ‘race in October’, alluding to the Prix De L’Arc De Triomphe for which she is now a hot favourite on the back of today’s success.
“All in all she’s as good a filly as I’ve ever trained,” Gosden said.
“I am great believer in this race being a meeting of the generations and she has proved it.
“She would have won on good ground. I love great fillies to train, they are just a pleasure to be around on the whole. She just takes the race by the horns.
“The Yorkshire Oaks is where we want to go and then freshen up and see where we are about a race on October 1 (Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe).”
While the past week had been a mentally draining one for Dettori, it was a sacrifice he was more than willing to make.
“I said to John after the Irish Oaks that I haven’t had a feeling like that since Golden Horn in the Arc,” he said.
“I knew she was up to the task, but I didn’t expect her to do that and she destroyed them. She is uncomplicated with a good mind.
“I lost 7lb (3kg) in six days. It was all water and fish basically for a week. It was boring, but I would not let anyone else ride her.”
Neither Idaho, who was third, nor his full-brother, last year’s winner Highland Reel, who finished fourth, could land a blow on this occasion, but trainer Aidan O’Brien was satisfied with their performances in defeat.
“I’m not going make any excuses, but obviously this ground isn’t ideal for Highland Reel,” he said.
“Idaho ran very well. He has a little bit of form with cut in the ground.”
