[AusRace] Horse of the decade

Mon Dec 30 15:53:13 AEDT 2019

Frankel head and shoulders above the rest as the decade’s best

 <https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/6bf0fda8afa0439eaaf5353703666b52>
Damian Lane wins the Cox Plate on Lys Gracieux at Moonee Valley in October.
Picture: Getty Images

*	Tony Arrold <https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/Tony+Arrold> 

Turf Writer

*	8:00PM December 29, 2019
*	4
<https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/horse-racing/frankel-head-and-should
ers-above-the-rest-as-the-decades-best/news-story/1d713be03cf90a597f460ae997
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In the global race for honours as horse of the decade, there was Frankel and
then the rest.

That would be the view of many, and particularly Britain’s regular
racegoers, from any standpoint but it is also the finding of the official
World’s Best Racehorse listings, which has Frankel as the benchmark
topweight of the annual ratings since their inception in 2004.

Frankel was handed a mark of 140 for 2012 and he heads an elite squad of 14
to have achieved a rating of 130 or better in the 10-year period 2010-19.

Australia had a strong presence for this World’s Best Racehorse rating
decade — heavily weighted by a sequence of outstanding sprinters — but the
Australian super mares Black Caviar and Winx, both earning a peak rating of
132, were this nation’s glowing ornaments.

The WBR ratings are compiled for the International Federation of Horseracing
Authorities by a select panel of senior handicappers from major racing
countries, but with the ratings expressed in the imperial system of pounds
favoured by Britain and North America.

Ratings are based on an individual’s best performance of a calendar year,
not a package for a year, nor the career total of an individual.

Progressively updated with interim listings released throughout the course
of the year, the final and official rankings are announced by the IFHA
around the third week of January.

As a first-time visitor to England’s famed Royal Ascot meeting in 2012, I
was among the privileged to witness first-hand the performance that gave
Frankel, a four-year-old by Galileo, his 140 rating (or 63.5kg by the metric
measure).

About 11 months earlier, I had viewed the live telecast from the other side
of the globe of the English 2000 Guineas and signed off content that
Frankel’s cavalier display was visually the second-most breathtaking
racetrack performance I had seen (in my opinion nothing compares with
Secretariat’s 1973 Belmont Stakes win in America).

The Group I Queen Anne Stakes, Royal Ascot’s mile championship, opened the
2012 meeting with Frankel facing his 11th unbeaten start. He destroyed his
rivals, posting a winning margin of 11 lengths in record time.

Frankel is not only the WBR ratings’ benchmark, he also has the
second-highest figure for the decade, having topped the ratings in 2011 with
a 136 mark for that awesome English 2000 Guineas performance.

But for Frankel, Australia’s Black Caviar would have topped the 2011 ratings
on 132. Nonetheless, this remarkable daughter of Bel Esprit was the world’s
top-rated pure sprinter, in a distance range of 1000m to 1300m, for four
consecutive years, 2010-13 inclusive.

Introduced to the WBR ranking in 2010 on 123, Black Caviar slipped back from
132 in 2011 to 130 in 2012, the year she made her one start away from
Australia.

And that was to bookend Royal Ascot’s first day blockbuster by Frankel with
her closing day victory, the 22nd of her unblemished 25-start career, in the
Group I Diamond Jubilee Stakes.

Australian-bred and/or trained sprinters to snare a 122-plus rating in the
decade were Hay List and Rocket Man (125), Santa Ana Lane (currently 124),
Chautauqua, Sepoy, Lankan Rupee and Terravista (123), More Joyous,
Atlantic Jewel, Pierro and Trapeze Artist (122) and Nature Strip (currently
122).

 <https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/8b68e34022482472f8453820acf7ca1c> Tom
Queally and Frankel win The 2000 Guineas Stakes at Newmarket in 2011.
Picture: Getty Images

>From a career perspective in this decade, public voting for a horse of the
world award may well have Winx pipping the undefeated Frankel and Black
Caviar in a three-way finish.

Like Frankel, Winx did not compete outside her native country but the
daughter of Street Cry enriched Australian racing for five glorious seasons,
two to six years.

The Chris Waller-trained mare won 37 of her 43 starts — unbeaten for the
last 33 while harvesting 25 Group Is and retiring with an all-time world
record earnings of $26,451,175.

Like Black Caviar, Winx first entered the 120-plus division of the WBR on a
123 rating for 2015 — sharing eighth spot with 13 others. She moved into
third place on 132 in 2016 as the best turf runner of any sex behind the US
dirt horses Arrogate (134) and California Chrome (133).

Winx earned the same exceptional mark of 132 in 2017 but was overshadowed by
Arrogate (134). And in 2018 she won all her seven outings — Group Is and
including the renamed Winx Stakes — but she had to share top honours with
British-trained Cracksman (son of Frankel).

 <https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/615b41737da4aad2782e95472252af2d> 

Arrogate arrived comet-like to American racing in the second half of 2016,
his barnstorming form harvesting record earnings of $US17.42m ($24.96m) in
an extraordinary five-month period.

His stunning win sequence included the Group I Breeders’ Classic and the
inaugural The Pegasus (briefly the world’s richest race) before a dynamic
last-to-first Dubai World Cup victory.

As dramatically as he had arrived, Arrogate departed, ingloriously, in much
the same time frame in the second half of 2017 but the 134 mark from his
Dubai success in March kept him on top.

Arrogate’s two-year reign followed the exploits of another US dirt runner,
American Pharoah, who attracted a 134 topweight for 2015 to become the
second three-year-old of the decade to do so – Frankel was the other on 136
back in 2011.

American Pharoah was rated on 128 after becoming the first US triple crown
winner in 37 years. But he was raised to 134 after thrashing his elders
later that year in his racing finale, the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

The highest-rated older middle-distance runner of the decade was the
British-trained Harbinger (by Dansili) who gained the decade’s next highest
rating behind Frankel with a 135 mark in 2010, a rating achieved in his
spectacular 11-length win in course record time in the Group I King George
VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

A post-race injury at what was only his fourth unbeaten start of the year
prevented Harbinger improving his rating further as he did not race again,
finding a new career at stud in Japan.

Japan holds the key to whether the final ratings for 2019 will have a
topweight at 130 or better — a common factor of the first nine years of the
decade.

As of the latest interim release on November 10, the British pair Crystal
Ocean and Enable shared topweight on 128 with French stayer Walgeist — with
Winx rather shoddily treated equal seventh on 125, Santa Ana Lane on 124 and
veteran miler Happy Clapper on 123.

But Japanese-bred mare Lys Gracieux, raised from 119 to 121 for her Cox
Plate demolition in late October, is due for a significant reassessment as
she returned home from her Melbourne triumph to line up in the Group I Arima
Kinen nine days ago.

In a race that attracted national wagering turnover of ¥46.889bn ($779.8m),
Lys Gracieux turned in a career-best performance.

She toyed with her 15 rivals, including nine Group I winners, winning by
five lengths in a time just one second off the track record. In 2011,
Japan’s triple crown winner Orfevre closed his classic season by beating
older horses in the Arima Kinen.

He was given a year-end rating of 123, clearly a mark that should have had
the WBR handicapping panel shipped off to the nearest branch of Specsavers.

Orfevre brought off an Arima Kinen double in 2013, this time his
eight-length margin advancing his rating from 125 to 129.

As a comparison, for her similar dominant success in the Arima Kinen, Lys
Gracieux will require a rare 9lb (4kg) rise to reach 130, but a 7lb (3kg)
boost to 128 for a four-way tie at the top is feasible.

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