Remember the last time there was a Frankel

The horse was Celtic Swing and he carried all before him as a 2yo and turned up at Newmarket 8/10 for the 2000 Guineas Race replay

I am VERY scared of horses who run too often when they are 2 year olds. I would prefer a fresh 3 year old every time.

Perhaps Frankel is different and he can do it??? I'll reserve my rights until after the Guineas

Bob Apalache?? rings a bell............sure it was fav and finished last?

You won`t have to wait long Tommy,he is entered for the Greenham on Saturday..

ps i seen him in a gallop wow,Cecil is really bullish,something he never is!

Racing needs boom horses so I hope you and Cecil are both correct

hibernia Wrote:

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> The horse was Celtic Swing and he carried all
> before him as a 2yo and turned up at Newmarket
> 8/10 for the 2000 Guineas Race replay

I was living in UK when Celtic Swing was the subject of incredible hype during the winter and all the way up to the Guineas. He dominated headlines virtually everyday. His two-year-old record was good but not sure if it justified the hype that suggested he was on his way to being as good if not better than the greats of the past.

Think we should be slightly concerned about the fitness of the Cecil string,his fancied runners have ran liked they needed the run

Bookies are scared that we could have single figure runners in the guineas,with owners and trainers saying lets go to Ireland or France,Frankel could be very short for th guineas..

Frankel is now the "hottest" fav for Guineas Victory in 40 years.....

Cecil says


"He did his final quiet piece of work this morning. I'm delighted with him, but we've still got four days to go," said Cecil.

"It was just with a lead horse, a nice second canter and we let him go on for the last furlong. He was relaxed and settled well.

"He's in good form and I'll be surprised if he's not a better horse now than when he ran at Newbury."

Timeform explains his rating


Timeform's Head of Handicapping, Simon Rowlands, explains how time and form combine to show that Frankel is as good as he looked in the 2000 Guineas...

What else can there be to concentrate on in this Handicappers' Corner than Frankel? Just in case you missed it, the Henry Cecil-trained colt won the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket on Saturday in unforgettable style to extend his unbeaten run to six.

He was sent off the shortest-priced favourite in the race since 1974 and won by the widest margin - six lengths - since Tudor Minstrel won by eight in 1947. Frankel's combined winning margins now stand at 35¾ lengths.

It was not just Frankel's winning margin that was remarkable in the first British classic of 2011: there was an astonishing 17½ lengths back to the fourth, 26 lengths back to the seventh and nearly a furlong back to the last in the field of 13. Top jumps races are not often won in such a fashion, let alone top Flat races at just a mile and on ground on the fast side of good.

It is not necessary to understand ratings to appreciate such special occasions. But ratings are a way of measuring the worth of performances in a wider historical context, and events like Saturday's test not just the participants but the methods that handicappers use.

As stated previously, the idea that you should pick a horse which has "run to form" and base your entire assessment of a race around that - so-called yardstick handicapping - is dubious at the best of times and is especially flawed when dealing with unexposed horses still short of maturity.

It is also patently wrong to apply the same pounds-per-length allowances to all races at a given distance regardless of the circumstances. And, yet, such handicapping-by-convenience continues to be peddled in some quarters.

At Timeform we use a suite of handicapping tools (click HERE to find out more about how we do things) to assist in coming up with ratings. These include race standardisation - whereby the likely strength of a race is established from precedent, after adjustment for time, conditions, field size, margins between horses and so on - prior-rating standardisation and time analysis.

Each of these measures independently pointed to Frankel's winning performance being worthy of a figure in the mid-to-high 130s on the bare result: a bare-form 137 falls well within the range of likely figures.

But 'the bare result' does not always tell the whole story, including, arguably, here. Frankel went off in front and ran his rivals ragged. By halfway, he was at least 10 lengths clear of the main pack, most of whom were hard at work while he was still travelling within himself. It was only late in the day that he looked like winning by anything other than a record margin.

Sectional analysis would have helped greatly in measuring the merit of how Frankel went about winning the 2000 Guineas, and not just that he did. But British racing does not have official sectionals, and the falseness of this economy becomes especially apparent on occasions like this.

Nonetheless, it is possible to establish that Frankel got to halfway in about 47.5 sec (after response delay and parallax error is accounted for). That is significantly faster than the Guineas for which we have electronic sectionals, including ones run under quicker conditions than this year's. Frankel appeared to be posting 11-second or near-11-second furlong sectionals mid-race, something more likely to be seen in a top sprint.

Frankel gave a substantial beating to the placed horses Dubawi Gold (rated 121, just below the standard for a Guineas runner-up) and Native Khan (rated 120, just above par for a third), but the likelihood is that it could have been even more. The extra two lengths (5 lb) that Timeform's race reporter added is conservative but takes the colt's rating up to 142.

By comparison, the aforementioned Tudor Minstrel earned a rating of 144 at his best, as did Brigadier Gerard, winner of the Guineas in 1971. Sea The Stars and Harbinger were both rated 140 - at longer distances - in recent years. No horse had run to higher than 130 in the Guineas since Dancing Brave in 1986.

Frankel's 142 rating will be tested by his performances, and by the performances of those he beat pointless at Newmarket, through the rest of the year. In that sense it is 'provisional', but it is a rating that we at Timeform are happy to stand by given the evidence available at this stage. That evidence includes an outstanding final time, translating to a timefigure of 136.

Only very good horses can run times like that. Surely only a true great could run one having gone so fast so early.

The big question is should Frankel run in the Derby???

I've watched some of his early races and he certainly never raced like he did on Saturday.

I would say he is more versatile than people might think. There are question marks over whether he will get the trip, his dam was a a sprinter although there is plenty stamina in his breeding lines.

I think the only way to answer the stamina questions is to run him, there only is one Derby...

Here's another impressive frontrunning win.

Youtube