Frankel sprints well clear of his rivals to easily win the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot on Tuesday.
The world’s top-rated galloper Frankel made it eleven wins from eleven races, by eleven lengths, when he soared to victory in the opening race of Royal Ascot 2012. The Gr1 Queen Anne Stakes forms a leg of the QIPCO British Champion Series.
The insensitivity of GBI in cutting the television feed to Tellytrack denied ecstatic racing fans across South Africa the benefit of wallowing in the post-race glory. But the shiver up the spine and the dizzy thrill of the adrenaline rush had already been felt by all.
We saw all the elevens and greatness on this Tuesday 19 June 2012. Of that there is no question!
This was a Gr1 field but they may as well have been ten kid’s ponies. Sir Henry Cecil’s superstar annihilated his opposition over the straight mile under regular jockey Tom Queally as the four-year-old produced a performance befitting his huge reputation and his prohibitive odds of 1-10.
The race worked out beautifully.
But he could have left the start ten minutes later and still beaten them. Led by his stablemate Bullet Train, Queally took up the running with three furlongs left, and within a few strides the contest was over as his old foe Excelebration, momentarily threatened before having his heart torn out as the machine powered away.
The 33-1 chance Side Glance ran third.
Both the winning trainer and jockey commented after the race that Frankel’s seventh Gr1 win was his peak performance to date.
Cecil said: “I’m not surprised but relieved, no horse is a certainty. He’s a great horse, he did exactly what I thought he would but he’s still improving.
“It looks like he’ll stay a mile and a quarter, he’s in the Eclipse, Sussex Stakes and Juddmonte, we’ll feel our way and he’ll tell me what to do.”
An overwhelmed Tom Queally added: “He settled and travelled, he’s amazing. That was his best performance, he ticked all the boxes and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
And Now For Saturday
Black Caviar
With Frankel setting the tone for what can only be something of a thrilling anti-climax hereon in, Royal Ascot continues this week and reaches another crescendo on Saturday when the unbeaten Black Caviar sets out to record her 22nd straight win in the Diamond Jubilee Stakes.
The southern hemisphere’s fairer sex answer for Frankel, Black Caviar , will step out on the final day of Royal Ascot on Saturday, when the brilliant unbeaten Australian sprinter will show why she is the most famous horse to have raced in Australia since Phar Lap.
The 1930 Melbourne Cup winner became the hero of a country in the grip of the Great Depression, much like the economic ills facing the world today. Unlike Black Caviar he stayed all day, but like her his fame spread around the world, and it was not long before he was invited to run in what was then billed as the richest race in the world, at Agua Caliente in Tijuana. He won the race but died not long after in mysterious circumstances in California.
Black Caviar has also become a public idol and has acquired the status of a genuine sporting icon.
She has her own fan club, her own merchandising outlet, and recently put 30,000 on the gate at Morphettville in Adelaide, at meetings that would normally struggle to attract one-tenth of that attendance.
It has been shown that nine out of 10 people in any major Australian city have heard of Black Caviar.
Perhaps that explains why Black Caviar’s owners were lured into striking a six-figure deal with racing television company TVN and Racing Victoria, the sport’s controlling body in the state, for semi-exclusive access to the mare on her trip to Britain.
TVN editors will be putting together a television documentary of the Black Caviar story, placing heavy emphasis on her visit to Britain.
Peter Moody, the mare’s trainer, is making his fourth trip with a Royal Ascot contender, but he is adamant that winning here is not going to figure high on his list of personal achievements.
Moody is said to have favoured a campaign back in Australia with a trip to Hong Kong at the end of the season, but he has given in to the owners, who long held ambitions to come to Ascot.
Watch Black Caviar at 16h45 on Saturday on Tellytrack Dstv 232.
