- This topic has 231 replies, 37 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 6 months ago by
.
- Posts
Cirrus Des Aigles last 4 runs on heavy or very soft going have ended up in 4 wins by 8, 10, 8 and 9 lengths respectively and never fully extended. As I pointed out previously, I think people fail to appreciate what a fricking monster that horse is on such ground. Would have won the Arc by a country mile imo given the conditions had he qualified for racing in it.
Still fancy Frankel simply because I cannot stand the idea of him going out on a defeat, but I don’t think this race is as much of a foregone conclusion as his races this season. Cirrus on heavy going is quite a few pounds ahead of the Cirrus on other grounds, which most seem to be rating him on.
The weather reports seem to be getting finer every day, heavy ground now appears unlikely. All other things being equal it’s Frankel by 8L+.
I think the "Dancing Brave beat better horses" thing is rubbish. I presume Phil Smith is talking about the 100 or so that all finished in a line in the Arc? That many 130 (ish) horses in one race??? I think the liklihood is they were over-rated. The King George run was nothing amazing he scraped home. The Eclipse was a good performance but really better than Frankels Guineas or Juddmonte or Queen Anne?
There aren’t many people now who think Dancing Brave was as good as Frankel is, there is a good reason for that – he wasnt.
Funny enough his Arc win doesn’t rate as highly as you would expect among the elite judges of racing or so I read. I prefer to listen to the opinion of jockeys than outsider and for Pat Eddery to say he was the best ever he rode is some compliment..No doubt in my mind he was one special horse.
As good as Frankel? Highly unlikely he was very relaxed and a very easy ride according to Pat but how could anything cope with Frankel’s turbo engine? When he goes it’s unreal how quickly he brushes aside very good horses.
Hughsie thought Canford Cliffs was a monster of a horse and nothing on the planet could beat him. Trying to compare him to the likes of the very talented Paco Boy Hughsie would have laughed in your face he thought so much of him.
The thing is he was probably right and had Frankel not come along Canford Cliffs may well have been compared to some of the greats from the past. After all he had made Goldikova look ordinary and beat Rip Van Winkle over his best trip with Hughsie displaying pure contempt for the O’Brien star, giving him a 2 length start in the closing and then picking him off as he liked.
He was without doubt one class animal and would have been hailed as one of the best milers ever yet Frankel kicked him aside like a plater so I just laugh when people say Frankel hasn’t beat much.
We all fall into that trap of thinking so and so isn’t that good when Frankel kicks them aside but what a horse Exelebrartion would have been without him around.
He may well have been rated around the Brigadiers mark as without Frankel he may well have been going for his 13th consecutive win on Saturday. Imagine the write ups he’d be getting and how highly Timeform would have rated him had Frankel not existed.
A bit of a rant to get to the point that I agree Dancing Brave was no where near as good as Frankel only Secretariat and Sea-Bird can be mentioned in the same breath
I agree with you regarding Sea Bird but Secretariat was beaten too often for my liking, dirt alsso tends to exagerate winning distances.
Correct me if I’m wrong but didnt Eddery actually state that Golden Fleece was the most talented horse he ever rode?
http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-ra … t7DaysNews
Andre Fabre calls Frankel "the best there’s been".
Excelebration is a good miler but the biggest notch on Frankel’s belt over a mile is Canford Cliffs. Canford hung badly late in the Sussex S. where they met, and maybe would’ve been able to stick on within 2 or 3 lengths if he was right (but note the race was a sit-sprint which compresses margins), but Canford mowed down Goldikova in stunning fashion and was almost certainly better than that mare ever was.
I doubted him up until the Sussex, since the guineas form was average and he looked beatable at Ascot, but it’s evident from his subsequent performances that Cecil was right when he said Frankel was just idling when seeming to tire in the St. James Palace Stakes.Cirrus Des Aigles obviously loves the wet in the way few horses do, but it would need to be quite bottomless for him to win I think. But this is a proper race, Ridasiyna clocked great time on Arc day in the bog so I think she’ll run much better than most think she will
"This is undoubtedly his stiffest test to date," Smith said on Sunday. "There’s no question that these are the best two horses he has taken on and he’s got it all to do.
"On soft or heavy going Cirrus Des Aigles is a serious horse. We don’t yet know that about Frankel because he hasn’t raced on the type of ground we have seen over the past week."
Will Frankel get through the mud? His connections seem sanguine about soft and point out that he has raced on it once before, when holding off Nathaniel by half a length on his debut in 2010. They may withdraw him if the going turns heavy.
"I don’t see why he wouldn’t cope with it," Smith said. "The thing about soft ground is that it inconveniences some horses, so he might win but whether he can produce the level of performance we’ve seen from him I don’t know."
That matters because, for all Frankel’s many impressive displays, Smith is still waiting for the colt to do something so dramatic as to make him the best horse in the recent history of the official ratings. To this point Frankel has achieved a mark of 140, putting him just behind Dancing Brave, who carried the same colours of Khalid Abdulla and scored 141 in 1986.
It is a source of some chagrin to Smith, whose personal feeling is that Frankel really is the best Flat racehorse of his lifetime. "But it’s difficult, at the moment, to prove it with the figures."
Frankel will be weighed in the balance for the final time in Hong Kong in December, when the world’s senior handicappers meet to agree on definitive figures for this year’s runners. His rating could go up at that stage but it could also go down. Bathos is the fear. Most racing fans feel Frankel deserves a better epitaph than "the second-best horse since 1985".
It is "hugely difficult" to make comparisons, Smith says, not least because handicapping has changed in personnel and in method over the past quarter-century. But the main problem is that Frankel has not faced the same quality of opposition that Dancing Brave pushed aside when winning his Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
"There’s no question that Dancing Brave ran against better horses than Frankel has met but then he never hammered them in the way that Frankel has. He gave them a start and ran past them.
"That’s the difference between these two. One has beaten good horses by a mile, the other beat very good horses by not so far."
Now, in Cirrus Des Aigles and Nathaniel, Frankel faces worthy rivals, though Smith indicates he might still need to beat them by five lengths to get to 141. Does the handicapper regret that Frankel has never been sent abroad in search of greater challenges, as Dancing Brave was?
"No, I want him to run in Britain. This race is shaping up to be the best race in the world this year and that’s what I want British racing to have. So let’s hope the three of them all turn up in good shape and we’ll see what happens."
This is a fair summary of the race, though Frankel has raced on soft ground, and CDA is the highest rated opponent Frankel has faced so it is his stiffest test but he has easily beaten Excelebration who is rated at only 1 below Nathaniel at 125 who on that basis can therefore be discounted as can all the others.
The point about DB beating better horses than Frankel has but not by as far is true but it is exactly what you would expect to happen and is how ratings are arrived at and is a rather obvious statement for a senior handicapper to make.
Frankel is rated 10lbs ahead of CDA so you’d expect him all else equal to beat him by at least 3 and a quarter lengths. By all else I mean the ground is no worse than soft and they run to their known form and of course assuming Frankel is a 140 horse over 10f as well as a mile.
I think the "Dancing Brave beat better horses" thing is rubbish. I presume Phil Smith is talking about the 100 or so that all finished in a line in the Arc? That many 130 (ish) horses in one race??? I think the liklihood is they were over-rated. The King George run was nothing amazing he scraped home. The Eclipse was a good performance but really better than Frankels Guineas or Juddmonte or Queen Anne?
There aren’t many people now who think Dancing Brave was as good as Frankel is, there is a good reason for that – he wasnt.
Well comparing horses from different generations isn’t easy but for me Dancing Brave was the best horse I’ve seen since the days of Nijinsky, Mill Reef and BG and now Frankel.
Perhaps you ought to have a closer look at his record. In the 2,000 he beat Green Desert comfortably by 3 lengths (forget the Derby as Starkey cost him the race) in the Eclipse he beat Trypitch by 4 lengths. Its true he only beat Shardari by 3/4 of a length in the King George but the dual Derby winner Shahrastani was 7 lengths behind. He then had a prep race at Goodwood where he broke the track record and his nearest opponent was 12 lengths back.
As for the Arc he broke the course record coming from miles back and ran the last furlong in 10.5 seconds winning by a length and half from a field that included Bering, Shardari, Trypitch and Shahrastani. DB is well worthy of the high esteem he is held in and his rating of 141.
We all fall into that trap of thinking so and so isn’t that good when Frankel kicks them aside but what a horse Exelebrartion would have been without him around.
He may well have been rated around the Brigadiers mark
as without Frankel he may well have been going for his 13th consecutive win on Saturday. Imagine the write ups he’d be getting and how highly Timeform would have rated him had Frankel not existed.
A bit of a rant to get to the point that I agree Dancing Brave was no where near as good as Frankel only Secretariat and Sea-Bird can be mentioned in the same breath
Excelebration rated around the same as BG, you must be having a laugh. He’d have been left trailing in his wake and been just as tried at staring at his backside disappearing into the distance as he has been of Frankel’s.
Frankel is a fantastic racehorse but people do need to keep some perspective. I never saw Sea Bird race but there is no doubt in my mind the likes of DB, Mill Reef and BG can be comfortably mentioned in the same breath as Frankel.
We all fall into that trap of thinking so and so isn’t that good when Frankel kicks them aside but what a horse Exelebrartion would have been without him around.
He may well have been rated around the Brigadiers mark
as without Frankel he may well have been going for his 13th consecutive win on Saturday. Imagine the write ups he’d be getting and how highly Timeform would have rated him had Frankel not existed.
A bit of a rant to get to the point that I agree Dancing Brave was no where near as good as Frankel only Secretariat and Sea-Bird can be mentioned in the same breath
Excelebration rated around the same as BG, you must be having a laugh. He’d have been left trailing in his wake and been just as tried at staring at his backside disappearing into the distance as he has been of Frankel’s.
Frankel is a fantastic racehorse but people do need to keep some perspective. I never saw Sea Bird race but there is no doubt in my mind the likes of DB, Mill Reef and BG can be comfortably mentioned in the same breath as Frankel.
Yep, but you seem to be missing HGD’s point. If indeed there was no Frankel and Excelebration had gone on to win 13 consecutive, most of which would have been G1s in HGD’s hypothetical example(actually Zoffany did finish ahead of him in in the ST James Palace), then the reality is he would have been regarded as one of the all-time great milers and indeed wouldn’t have been rated that far off Brigadier Gerard. Now, I don’t think he would have won 13 on the trot, but he still would have earned an incredible collection of G1 wins, and there’s absolutely no way anyone would have entertained the idea of a multiple consecutive Group 1s winner finishing miles behind any other previous miler. The only reason you can consider such a possibility is because of what Frankel did to him. That’s the main issue when rating the opposition against something as exceptional as Frankel. If Goldikova was always coming up against Zarkava and finishing second to her constantly as she did in the French 1000 Guineas and Oaks, then no way would she have been regarded as one of the all-time great mares as she is today. Yet, she would have been the same horse all the way through.
Excelebration is inferior to Canford Cliffs, Makfi, Rip Van Winkle, Henrythenavigator and Goldikova but that is only in the last 5 seasons, to go back 40 years the list would be very long indeed. He is a top class, durable performer but someway below the A list of milers, comparisons with the Brigadier are truly risible.
We all fall into that trap of thinking so and so isn’t that good when Frankel kicks them aside but what a horse Exelebrartion would have been without him around.
He may well have been rated around the Brigadiers mark
as without Frankel he may well have been going for his 13th consecutive win on Saturday. Imagine the write ups he’d be getting and how highly Timeform would have rated him had Frankel not existed.
A bit of a rant to get to the point that I agree Dancing Brave was no where near as good as Frankel only Secretariat and Sea-Bird can be mentioned in the same breath
Excelebration rated around the same as BG, you must be having a laugh. He’d have been left trailing in his wake and been just as tried at staring at his backside disappearing into the distance as he has been of Frankel’s.
Frankel is a fantastic racehorse but people do need to keep some perspective. I never saw Sea Bird race but there is no doubt in my mind the likes of DB, Mill Reef and BG can be comfortably mentioned in the same breath as Frankel.
I think that is a fair comment.
I’m guilty of believing Frankel to be probably the greatest flat race horse of all time, but I have no evidence other than historical to suggest that any of the previous greats were lesser horses. The biggest clue to me is in watching replays of these various horses. Visually I don’t think any horse compares to him.
I’ve also listened a fair bit to the views of old hands in the town. Virtually to a man they have told me for instance that your namesake would not have lived with Frankel, but of course that’s always going to be a subjective matter. My brother-in-law is an ex work rider who once rode a winner at Chester. (I think.) He has the credentials to know one horse from another and he is adamant that BG wasn’t as good.
Please don’t take these comments provocatively. They are not intended in that manner. I’m just pointing out what a few people have told me. I wasn’t old enough to remember the great BG myself, so I can’t call it personally.
I personaly am hoping for some rain over the weekend so Frankel`s opponents can get thier ground. If we get good ground it will be no more than a victory lap for frankel at ascot and for me takes away any excitent form the race of course except seeing Frankel run.
It would be nice to see Frankel take on his toughest rivals yet (don`t think CC was at his best) on conditions that favour them. Not saying he won`t win even if it was a swimming contest but atleast it will beg the question by how close can they get otherwise we know we are going to get a demolotion job. So I will be doing the rain dance!
And while we`re at the Frankel argument…
Excelebration is inferior to Canford Cliffs, Makfi, Rip Van Winkle, Henrythenavigator and Goldikova but that is only in the last 5 seasons, to go back 40 years the list would be very long indeed. He is a top class, durable performer but someway below the A list of milers, comparisons with the Brigadier are truly risible.
Can’t agree with this. CC, Makfi, RVW, Henry and Goldikova have form lines that tie them pretty close together, at their best probably no more than a lenght or so between them with perhaps Canford Cliffs just shading it.
There is nothing that suggests any of that bunch could have got any closer to Frankel than Excelebration has and I would rate Excelebration at the very least as good as any of those, if not better.
Take Frankel out of the equation, added to his Moulin and Jacques le Marois victories Excelebration has won a QEII by 3.5L, a Lockinge by 4L, although only just clinging on to 2nd in the Queen Anne, if ridden with more restraint on all known form would probably won that by daylight. I could also make valid case that he was clear 2nd best when 3rd in the SJP.
With a record of 12 consecutive victories including 6 G1’s we would be talking about Excelebration as perhaps one of the very best milers since Brigadier Gerard, certainly a A list miler to rank with the likes of Kris, Irish River, Northjet, Zafonic etc.
Frankel makes very good horses look ordinary and its been Excels misfortune to be made to look ordinary when he most certainly isn’t.
Excelebration is inferior to Canford Cliffs, Makfi, Rip Van Winkle, Henrythenavigator and Goldikova but that is only in the last 5 seasons, to go back 40 years the list would be very long indeed. He is a top class, durable performer but someway below the A list of milers, comparisons with the Brigadier are truly risible.
Can’t agree with this. CC, Makfi, RVW, Henry and Goldikova have form lines that tie them pretty close together, at their best probably no more than a lenght or so between them with perhaps Canford Cliffs just shading it.
There is nothing that suggests any of that bunch could have got any closer to Frankel than Excelebration has and I would rate Excelebration at the very least as good as any of those, if not better.
Take Frankel out of the equation, added to his Moulin and Jacques le Marois victories Excelebration has won a QEII by 3.5L, a Lockinge by 4L, although only just clinging on to 2nd in the Queen Anne, if ridden with more restraint on all known form would probably won that by daylight. I could also make valid case that he was clear 2nd best when 3rd in the SJP.
With a record of 12 consecutive victories including 6 G1’s we would be talking about Excelebration as perhaps one of the very best milers since Brigadier Gerard, certainly a A list miler to rank with the likes of Kris, Irish River, Northjet, Zafonic etc.
Frankel makes very good horses look ordinary and its been Excels misfortune to be made to look ordinary when he most certainly isn’t.
Of course there is something to suggest they could have got closer to Frankel. They all achieved higher ratings than Excelebration over a mile. In particular Goldikova’s 2009 victory in the Jacques le Marois is 8lbs better than any effort that Excelebration has produced in victory or defeat.
Comparing horses of vastly differing generations is too inexact to be definitive. The fact remains that Excelebration would not have been champion miler in 2008, 2009 or 2010 on what he has achieved this year or last.It is difficult to quantify how good Excelebration actually is. It seems somewhat fanciful to suggest, without the existance of Frankel, that he deserves acclaim alongside many of the great milers in history.
Is Excelebration any better than Makfi for instance? His form is high quality, but if we move Frankel, then one struggles to see why we’d remember this horse in 10-15 years from an historical perspective. Canford Cliffs will be remembered, perhaps in similar light to Rock of Gibraltar. Goldikova will be remembered for different reasons, though her form whilst absolutely bullet proof, shows us better horses than her raced during her time period. But why should we remember Excelebration? a 2 time Group 1 winner. The 1st of those was an ordinary affair, the 2nd a high class affair. The 2nd had quality throughout, however, Cityscape, Elusive Cape, Moonlight Cloud (and line for Farhh) whilst all genuine top class performers, won’t be remembered in 10-15 years time as historically significant. Why so then, should Excelebration be remembered, given i feel little seperates him and those listed, outside of a few pounds.
I personaly am hoping for some rain over the weekend so Frankel`s opponents can get thier ground. If we get good ground it will be no more than a victory lap for frankel at ascot and for me takes away any excitent form the race of course except seeing Frankel run.
It would be nice to see Frankel take on his toughest rivals yet (don`t think CC was at his best) on conditions that favour them. Not saying he won`t win even if it was a swimming contest but atleast it will beg the question by how close can they get otherwise we know we are going to get a demolotion job. So I will be doing the rain dance!
And while we`re at the Frankel argument…
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/scorrie57/eclipse.jpg
Despite not looking at his best before the race, Camelot still went off a clear favourite for The Arc
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
I personaly am hoping for some rain over the weekend so Frankel`s opponents can get thier ground. If we get good ground it will be no more than a victory lap for frankel at ascot and for me takes away any excitent form the race of course except seeing Frankel run.
It would be nice to see Frankel take on his toughest rivals yet (don`t think CC was at his best) on conditions that favour them. Not saying he won`t win even if it was a swimming contest but atleast it will beg the question by how close can they get otherwise we know we are going to get a demolotion job. So I will be doing the rain dance!
And while we`re at the Frankel argument…
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/scorrie57/eclipse.jpg
Despite not looking at his best before the race, Camelot still went off a clear favourite for The Arc
touché
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.