Champions Day Making Long-Lasting Impact

It seems scarcely believable that a decade on from Frankel’s sensational and emotional swansong on QIPCO British Champions Day that we are about to witness the final race, also in the QIPCO Champion Stakes, of another unbeaten Britishbred superstar, Baaeed.

Extra poignancy is lent by the fact that within that timeframe we have lost the owner-breeders of both horses, Prince Khalid Abdullah and Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who through their respective powerful breeding operations of Juddmonte and Shadwell have contributed much to the history of the turf in Britain over the last four decades.

For many racing fans, the last we saw in public of the sport’s greatest patron of the modern era, Her Majesty The Queen, was on British Champions Day last October. On that day she was awarded a medal commemorating her induction to the QIPCO British Horseracing Hall of Fame and later presented the prize for the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes to the connections of Baaeed.

It was a presentation that would have had extra resonance for the Queen, for though the winner represented five generations of Shadwell breeding, Baaeed’s forebears are very much rooted in the
Royal Studs, with Baaeed’s ninth dam Feola having been an important foundation mare for her father, King George VI.

We will no doubt continue to reflect on the great legacy of Queen Elizabeth II on British Champions Day this year, and her decades of devotion to her beloved broodmare band at Sandringham serve as an important reminder that in thoroughbred breeding and racing, patience and long-term planning are paramount.

QIPCO British Champions Day was launched at Ascot in 2011, and though eleven years are but a blink of an eye when it comes to establishing stallions or evaluating the prowess of broodmares, one thing we can say for certain is that its greatest star Frankel is proving to be just as much of a force at stud as he was on the racecourse.

The elite mares he has received at Banstead Manor Stud over the last decade have ensured that the odds were stacked in his favour, but the weight of history implied that the success of Frankel the stallion could in no way be considered a sure thing.

Mighty though he was as a racehorse, he had enormous shoes to fill in attempting to follow the example of his extraordinary sire, Galileo. But, just as Galileo eventually outdid his own sire hugely influential sure Sadler’s Wells, who was in turn a son of the breed-shaping Northern Dancer, it is now not beyond the realms of possibility that Frankel’s stud achievements may eventually exceed those of his record-breaking father.

Having been crowned champion sire in Britain and Ireland for the first time in 2021, in July of this year Frankel reached a new benchmark of 100 stakes winners in record time, with just seven crops of racing age representing him. He is now responsible for 25 Group/Grade 1 winners and has been represented by three Classic winners in Europe during the 2022 season in Homeless Songs (Irish 1,000 Guineas), Nashwa (Prix de Diane), and Westover (Irish Derby).

To emphasise the breadth of his success, those top-level winners have come in Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, Japan, America, Australia, and Dubai. Frankel has never shuttled to Australia, but such is the interest from leading breeders around the world that mares come to him at Banstead Manor Stud to be covered during the summer on southern hemisphere time and then exported or returned to Australasia.

He is, by any measure, a supersire in the making.

An Expanding Influence

Champions Day has not, of course, been all about Frankel, but boy what a boost he gave the project in its first two years, winning the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes then the Champion Stakes.

His widely beloved trainer Sir Henry Cecil died in 2013, but his presence was very much felt again at the following year’s Champions Day when Noble Mission, trained by Lady Jane Cecil, brought the curtain down on his own admirable career by emulating his brother Frankel with victory in the Champion
Stakes.

Then in 2017 and 2018 Frankel began to make his mark on Champions Day as a stallion when his son Cracksman won back-to-back runnings of the Champion Stakes.

Noble Mission was afforded a place at stud at the legendary Lane’s End Farm in Kentucky where he remained for six years until moving to Shizunai Stallion Station in Japan. Cracksman, meanwhile, retired to Darley’s Dalham Hall Stud in Newmarket and has made an encouraging start with his first two-year-old runners in 2022.

At Dalham Hall, Cracksman stands alongside another Champion Stakes winner, Farhh, whose own promising stud career has been beset with fertility issues.

From relatively small crops of foals, he has proved to be a useful sire, the highlight of his career to date being the victory of his son King Of Change in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes of 2019. King Of Change is also now at stud, at Derrinstown in Ireland, along with Farhh’s fast son Far Above, who stands at Starfield Stud, and both now have their first crops of foals on the ground.

In the eleven runnings of the Champion Stakes at Ascot, there have been three French-trained winners. The hugely popular Cirrus Des Aigles came first, but as a gelding, his influence ended with his own celebrated racing career. Almanzor, the European champion three-year-old of 2016, was secured to stand at Haras d’Etreham where he had been bred.

His recent winners include one of the Queen’s final winners, the homebred Circle Of Fire, who won impressively at Salisbury in September and holds an entry for next year’s Derby.

Finally, last year’s Champion Stakes winner Sealiway will take up stud duties in France next season. Among the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes winners of recent years, one of the most special was Roaring Lion, bearing the colours of Qatar Racing, whose principal Sheikh Fahad Al Thani has been such a fervent supporter of racing in this country as the sponsor, with his brothers, of the QIPCO British Champions Series.

Tragically, after only one season at Tweenhills Stud, Roaring Lion succumbed to colic having just arrived for his first southern hemisphere season in New Zealand.His sole crop are now two-year-olds.

From Speed to Stamina

In 2015, the QIPCO British Champions Sprint was upgraded to Group 1 status and was immediately rewarded with a classy winner in the form of Shadwell’s homebred Muhaarar, who was completing an extraordinary Group 1 four-timer which had begun at Royal Ascot in the Commonwealth Cup.

His influence, and indeed range, was felt last year when the sprinter’s daughters Eshaada and Albaflora pulled off a one-two in the QIPCO British Champion Fillies & Mares Stakes over a mile and a half. Just a short-head separated them, with the Shadwell filly perhaps appropriately just in front.

Slade Power was another sprinter who relished the testing Ascot straight, having won on Champions Day in 2013 before claiming the following year’s Diamond Jubilee Stakes as well as the July Cup.

He has subsequently sired a Royal Ascot winner in the Queen Mary Stakes heroine Raffle Prize but moved to France two years ago after starting his stud career at Ireland’s Kildangan Stud.

Recent winners of the race, Sands Of Mali and Donjuan Triumphant, are in the early stages of their stud careers in Ireland and France respectively.

Seven of the eleven winners of the Champions Sprint have been geldings, a situation that is not uncommon in that division and which is even more prevalent in the stayers’ sector.

Trueshan, winner of the British Champions Long Distance Cup for the last two years, is one of six geldings to have won that Group 2 contest. Among the colts, the late Fame And Glory retired to Coolmore’s National Hunt division, as did Order Of St George and Kew Gardens.

It remains to be seen where and when the 2018 winner and longtime star of the staying ranks, Stradivarius, begins his stallion career, but his owner-breeder Bjorn Nielsen remains adamant that he will cover only Flat mares at stud.

The Marvellous Mares

How better to get the ball rolling in the inaugural QIPCO British Champion Fillies & Mares Stakes than to have that season’s Oaks winner turn up and win. So was the case for Martin and Lee Taylor’s Dancing Rain, whose successful 2011 season also included victory in the German Oaks.

Attracting plenty of attention when she was sold at Tattersalls for 4 million guineas when carrying her first foal by Frankel, Dancing Rain has become a decent if not outstanding broodmare, producing the Group 2 winner Magic Lily and Listed winner Jalmoud.

One of the greatest fillies to have graced QIPCO British Champions Day is Coolmore’s Magical, who recorded two of her seven Group 1 victories in the Fillies & Mares Stakes followed by the Champion Stakes.

Beautifully bred herself, and with a race record equal to her pedigree, Magical has naturally been sent to one of the very best at stud and her first foal, born this April, is a filly by Dubawi. Very similar comments apply to another of Galileo’s daughters, Minding, the 1000 Guineas and Oaks winner of 2016 who returned to a mile for her swansong that season to beat Ribchester and three of her fellow Classic winners in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes.

Her first foal, by Deep Impact, is now a two-year-old named Victorium and bred on the same Classic-winning cross as Snowfall and Saxon Warrior, and she has subsequently visited Dubawi twice. Hydrangea, too, has followed this exact breeding pattern, and it is fair to assume that we will be hearing plenty more about the offspring of all three Coolmore mares in the years to come.

In fact, it is a reasonable hope that the same can be said for most of the mares to have triumphed on QIPCO British Champions Day, as they have largely remained in the ownership of their breeders.

Journey, the 2016 Fillies & Mares winner is now among George Strawbridge’s illustrious broodmare band and is the dam of the winning three-year-old Storm Castle. Her erstwhile Clarehaven stable-mate Persuasive, a rare yearling purchase by Cheveley Park Stud, is now at the Thompson family’s Newmarket stud and has a winning daughter by Frankel named Persist.

Madame Chiang has already produced two black-type performers among her three winners for breeder Kirsten Rausing, and similar comments apply to Moyglare Stud’s Sapphire, whose own pedigree has been greatly enhanced since her victory in 2012 by the exploits of her Group 1-winning half-siblings Free Eagle, Search For A Song and Kyprios.

Tim Vestey’s Seal Of Approval already has three multiple winners to her name, including the promising Dubawi filly Royal Scandal. Most poignant of all perhaps would be to see success at stud for Qatar Racing’s 2015 Fillies & Mares winner Simple Verse, whose triumph at Ascot came after her victory
in the St Leger.

Her second foal, a filly from the only crop of Roaring Lion, has been named Queen Of The Pride. With two champions as parents, it would be especially pleasing to be able to welcome a queen back to Ascot one day.