Category: Horses

At the time of her retirement in October, 2020, shortly after her unsuccessful attempt to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for a third time, Enable had amassed £10.7 million in prize money, thereby setting a record for a European-trained horse. At that stage, jockey Frankie Dettori, who rode her on all bar two of her 19 starts, hailed her as ‘one of the greatest mares of our generation’.

However, according to Timeform, Enable recorded her best performance ever when winning the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, held at Chantilly that year, in 2017. The Timeform rating of 134 she achieved on that occasion was the highest by any British-trained filly in over 30 years, but fell 6lb short of the rating of 140 required for her to be considered one of the ‘greats’ of the Timeform era.

Nonetheless, victory in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe was the first by a three-year-old filly trained in Britain or Ireland and rounded off a trailblazing season in which Enable also won the Oaks, Irish Oaks, Yorkshire Oaks and King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes. Enable was, unsurprisingly, named Cartier Horse of the Year in 2017, as she was in 2019, when winning the Coral-Eclipse, Yorkshire Oaks and King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes. In 2018, she became the first and, so far, only horse to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and Breeders’ Cup Turf in the same season.

Currently standing at the Aga Khan’s Gilltown Stud, in Co. Kildare, for a stud fee of €150,000, Sea The Stars is rightly billed as ‘One of the all-time greats’. In an exceptional three-year-old campaign, in 2009, Sea The Stars carried all before him, winning all six starts, all at Group 1 level and including the 2,000 Guineas, Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

Timeform described his three-year-old campaign as ‘one of unparalleled, sustained excellence over a variety of trips.’ However, Sea The Stars achieved a Timeform Annual Rating of just 140 which, while the equivalent of that achieved by Shergar and Dancing Brave, among others, is only joint-eighth in the all-time list since Timeform ratings were first published in 1948. The horses rated higher than Sea The Stars in that list are Frankel, Sea-Bird, Brigadier Gerard, Tudor Minstrel, Abernant, Ribot and Mill Reef.

Few would argue that Timeform ratings are as accurate a measure as any of comparing one generation of racehorses with another. However, the ‘problem’ with Sea The Stars, as acknowledged by Timeform, wass that he was too far ahead of the rest of his generation for his own good. Trainer John Oxx said of him, ‘He always won comfortably [never by more than 2½ lengths] and had plenty of gas left as he didn’t exert himself too hard.’ The lack of ‘yardstick’ horses, by which to measure his performance, or any wide-margin victories, ultimately counted against Sea The Stars as far as his Timeform rating was concerned.

The race commonly known as the Coral-Eclipse is a Group One 1 contest open to horses aged three years and upwards and run over a mile and a quarter at Sandown Park in July each year. Since 1976, the race has been sponsored by bookmaker Coral, nowadays owned by Entain plc, formerly GVC Holdings, and is often referred to by its sponsored title.

However, the history of the race dates back to 1886, when it was inaugurated, as the Eclipse Stakes, under the auspices of British banker and thoroughbred racehorse breeder Leopold de Rothschild. Indeed, at the time of its inauguration, the Eclipse Stakes was worth 10,000 sovereigns to the winner, making it the most valuable race ever run in Britain.

The Eclipse Stakes is, indeed, named after a horse. Between May, 1769 and October, 1770, Eclipse won all ten races in which he actually competed, all bar one at odds-on, and another eight by walkover, such that he retired from racing officially unbeaten in 18 starts. Fittingly, the Eclipse Stakes has always attracted horses of the highest calibre; its roll of honour includes such luminaries of the sport as Mill Reef, Brigadier Gerard, Dancing Brave, Sea The Stars and Enable, to name but a handful.