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Afraid I don’t agree with you there ham – Frankel beat Excellebration, Farrh and St Nicholas Abbey by embarrasing margins, those were all top top horses and like Ian has stated he beat Cirrus Des Aigles on soft ground over 1m2f, you can’t really get better from in the modern era than beating that lot imo.
You’re 100% correct IMO Ben – all Flat racehorses will race against one small group of horses, it’s in the nature of the game.
The same could be said of Sea Bird and other true greats of the Turf like Brigadier Gerard, Tudor Minstrel, Abernant, Ribot and Mill Reef.
Excelebration was a good horse in his own right, he won a QEII by a wide margin.
St Nicholas Abbey won three Coronation Cups.
Farhh ran away with the Lockinge the year after Frankel retired.
Frankel made them all look like selling platers.
And OR 130 Cirrus Des Aigles (5lb better than anything Baaeed ever faced) was lethal on Heavy ground yet Frankel beat him comfortably on the surface despite sleepwalking out of the stalls.
Baaeed beat just TWO horses of comparable ability his entire career.
Palace Pier, narrowly, in a QEII, and Mishriff when Baaeed put up the one and only truly “great” performance in his career at York.
Baaeed was very good, but the media hyped him as if he was another Frankel.
Still, it meant I got a bit of 18.5 Bay Bridge win only, so I guess I shouldn’t complain!
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Not to mention 127 rated Canford cliffs who had won 5 group 1s in a row before he was bridled by frankel
And 126 rated nathaniel winner of a king george and an eclipse
And Palace Pier got a shocking ride from Dettori, where he spent far too much time looking over his shoulder. I think that was the start of the trouble between Gosden and Dettori.
Baaeed was a very good horse but the hype was silly sometimes, especially at Goodwood where a decent, workmanlike performance was hailed as brilliant by a hyperventilating Nick Luck.
“Baaeed was a very good horse but the hype was silly sometimes, especially at Goodwood where a decent, workmanlike performance was hailed as brilliant by a hyperventilating Nick Luck.”
Agreed
His juddmonte win was a superb performance
The rest really wasn’t anything special on the numbers
Remarkable consistency
A little bit cracksman like, absolutely exceptional once or twice, the rest of his runs not quite to that standard even when winning group 1s. That may just be because of the low quality of horses he took on over a mile.
He didn’t have an excelebration or Canford cliffs pushing him to the big numbers
The handicapper had to keep upgrading the 2nd horses like real world and modern games to justify his rating of baaeed
He was beating chindit by 5 lengths, order of australia by 5 lengths
They would’ve been beaten a furlong by frankel
His juddmonte was a genuine 130+ performance, I find it hard to rate any of his other runs over 125
Unless you’re barely old enough to be able to legally have a bet, you’ll remember Frankel – it really wasn’t that long ago that he raced.
If you remember Frankel and think it was ever anything other than ludicrous to ever suggest Baaeed was in the same class as the greatest horse EVER, you know nothing about racing.
Simple as.
End of.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"You could be 12 and know that
Just by watching frankels queen anne and judmonte on YouTube
The racing media just liked using frankels name to sell papers, to get people reading online articles and get viewers on ITV
They will have been gutted when he lost
They do the same with Honeysuckle, as good as she, the races she’s won, the consistency, she’s never put up a truly brilliant performance. She’s rated 165 an average enough rating for a grade 1 gelding.
“The racing media just liked using Frankel’s name to sell papers, to get people reading online articles and get viewers on ITV.”
Did that even work? The attendance on Champions Day was the second lowest in the history of the event and the television ratings were lower than Newmarket the week before.
It looks to me that Baaeed did not really gain much attention outside racing’s core audience.
32,000 rocked up to see Frankel’s Champion Stakes win and it was said that the only reason the capacity wasn’t increased further was that it wasn’t cost effective for one day to put in place the temporary hospitality facilities that are in place for the full 5 days of the Royal meeting.
He was box office not only because 99% of the time he destroyed rival after rival in a ruthless seemingly matter of fact manner but also because he was trained by Sir Henry.
A man who the vast majority of us older racing fans grew up with in his heyday (watching the likes of Wollow, Kris, Ardross, Oh So Sharp, Slip Anchor, Reference Point, Indian Skimmer, Diminuendo, Commander In Cheif & Bosra Sham etc) only to see his health, personal and professional lives all fall apart to where in 2005 he managed just 12 winners and on the Newmarket Heath one day he happened to overhear someone say, “That’s Henry Cecil. He should have retired a long time ago”
His resurgence back into the G1 big time with the likes of Light Shift, Midday & Twice Over was the ultimate comeback story only for it to be crowned literally in the twilight of his life by the horse that will go down as his greatest, a magnum opus of a horse in Frankel. Add into that mix that said horse was sent to him by the one main owner (Prince Kahlid) who stayed loyal to him through those darkest of dark days……it was a true Hollywood story that you couldn’t believe would possibly ever happen but for the fact that we all were lucky enough to be along for the ride.
Just like Baaeed and his own story was very good to watch but no amount of media hype could ever bring it to the level of Frankel’s greatness or that of his story.
I was one of those 32,000 at the culmination of the career of a racehorse who, unlike Baaeed, I found it impossible to criticise.
And tbh I would never have criticised Baaeed but for the absurd media hyping of a good, eventually very good, even arguably great, but never greatEST, racehorse.
It was the modern “GOAT” obsession writ large.
The Royal Lodge, the 2,000 Guineas, the Queen Anne, the International – four great performances.
Baaeed only hit a vaguely comparable level once – in his International.
For most of his career his OR even languished behind that of Excelebration, so often annihilated by Frankel.
But for me what really separates the two horses is that last race, the Champion Stakes.
Baaeed never faced a horse rated 130, Baaeed never raced on Heavy ground.
Frankel faced a horse rated 130 who, what’s more, was lethal on that Heavy ground.
And beat him – comfortably, despite sleepwalking out of the stalls.
And Baaeed?
Err, fourth to an OR 123 horse, 7lb Cirrus Des Aigle’s inferior.
FF is right – a 12yo could work it out.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Frankels queen anne
Everything off the bridle 2 out and crawling home trailing in his wake
Baaeds queen anne
Are they even the same species let alone of remotely comparable ability
What’s more in his QA romp Frankel recorded a faster furlong split (10.58s from 3 out to 2 out) than any of the sprinters managed in the Kings Stand run later that day and that was on ground officially called good to soft.
For me the first ‘oh my’ moment was his 2nd race at Doncaster when he beat Rainbow Springs by 13L (who on her next run was 3rd in the G1 Prix Marcel Boussac) and the 90 rated Diamond Geezer by 17L over 7F on good ground! Diamond Geezer on his previous run had been beaten 7L by Wootton Bassett who went on to win the G1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere. Interesting to note that Farhh was withdrawn from the race after getting upset in the stalls……maybe he had an idea what was about to happen.
The Donny race is also famous for the Stuart Machin commentary that had what must be one of the understatements of all understatements with the ‘he might just have a touch of star quality about him’……ya think!
As an aside it in interesting to compare their respective Sussex Stakes wins as 4 yr olds:
Frankel on officially good ground recorded a time of: 1m 37.56s (slow by 0.46s)
Baaeed on officially good to firm ground recorded a time of: 1m 37.74s (slow by 0.64s)Their last 4F splits in the race were:
Frankel: 11.15s, 10.78s, 10.72s & 11.88s
Baaeed: 11.80s, 11.20s, 10.70s & 11.31s“What’s more in his QA romp Frankel recorded a faster furlong split (10.58s from 3 out to 2 out) than any of the sprinters managed in the Kings Stand run later that day and that was on ground officially called good to soft…”
For comparative purposes a stand-alone figure of 10.58 secs. can be somewhat misleading. What about the other sectionals vs 5F King’s Stand winner that day? Is such data readily available?
But let’s put Frankel’s QA split-times in a proper context:
1st F: 15.11
2nd F: 11.79
3rd F: 11.96
4th F: 12.10
5th F: 11.26
6th F: 10.58
7th F: 11.04
8th F: 14.01One other thing: maybe it’s time for people to stop using Excelebration as some yardstick or “gold standard” by which race horses are compared. After all, he got pissed-on by Wise Dan in the BC Mile Turf, and he didn’t even finish second…
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