A horse that won on his first ever start as a 2 yr old over the 8F of Newmarket’s July course (with its rather stiff uphill finish) on very soft ground (time was nearly 8s slow), he would have had no trouble staying 12F in my opinion.
The way they rode him in the 2000g blew any chance he had of running in the Derby – there was absolutely no need for those tactics because if you watch the race the pacemaker Rerouted was just as quickly out of the stalls and clear on his side, so they could have easily waited for him to come over and slot in behind him, heck they could have just dropped him in and rode a waiting race and then kicked at the bushes as there was nothing in that field that could have gone with him.
If you also watch how well he settled in the St James’s Palace, which given the way they let him fly at Newmarket he had every reason not to settle and how he was perfectly tractable at Goodwood when he had to make his own running I think they were all erring on the side of caution with him.
Personally, I always felt the Queen Anne was the wrong race to run him in as I thought the Prince of Wales and an epic crowd pleasing clash with So You Think was the way to go and given how he easily went on to thump Farhh by 6L and 7L (who finished 3rd to So You Think in the POW beaten under 3L) and the form Frankel was in at Ascot, I think he would have destroyed So You Think and that could have then led him onto the Eclipse next and a rematch with Nathaniel (who only just beat Farhh ½L at Sandown).
Like many no doubt I had it all planned out in my mind how it would have went……..oh well.