On most mornings there are more than 2,000 horses being exercised on Newmarket Heath, Britain’s epicentre of the Thoroughbred industry.
Plenty of them will end up as minor winners and a decent number of stakes winners will progress from the blustery East Anglian acres of turf to sun-drenched winner’s enclosures across England and beyond. Every now and then a champion will emerge.
It is perhaps a term used too liberally. Each year there’s a champion 2-year-old, champion 3-year-old, champion stayer, champion sprinter. To call Enable (GB) a champion doesn’t really begin to do her justice.
Just months after Frankel (GB) strode up Warren Hill for the final time in October 2012, Juddmonte sent Concentric (GB) (Sadler’s Wells) on a 30-minute journey from Newmarket to Royston to be covered by his old rival Nathaniel (Ire). It would have been almost too indulgent to imagine that Newmarket could become home to another Thoroughbred of such alluring presence so soon after Frankel’s retirement, let alone one emerging from the same stud. But, by the summer of 2017, the foal resulting from that mating had started to write her own exciting chapter in the history of Juddmonte Farms.
Thunder and lightning announced Enable on the world stage when she stormed to the first of her 11 Group/Grade 1 victories as the rain lashed down on Epsom. To the Oaks, she added the Irish and Yorkshire versions and, in a stellar 3-year-old season, won her first of three King Georges and first of two Arcs. For many owner-breeders that would have been more than enough to ensure that she was hastened to stud to start work on the next generation.
Happily, for Enable’s growing legion of fans, this temptation was resisted for three years running. For keeping his great mare in training to the age of six, all who love racing owe Prince Khalid a huge debt of gratitude.
Enable more than upheld her side of the bargain. With each passing year she grew more statuesque, clearly thriving on her routine of emerging from John Gosden’s Clarehaven stable at the end of Newmarket’s Bury Road, either crossing the road for easy cantering days on Warren Hill, or heading away from town for more testing work mornings on the Al Bahathri or the Limekilns.
It is too easy to anthropomorphise horses but in watching Enable make her casual saunters to and from the gallops of a morning, a fanciful mind could interpret the air of regal serenity as her knowing that she was simply better than every other horse she passed. In truth, it is more that physical exertion came much more easily to her than to most and, generally, a racehorse who finds work easy is one who is at ease with life.
As Enable’s reputation grew, so must the pressure have increased on those closest to her. With John Gosden as her trainer the mare had the perfect statesmanlike spokesman to deliver tantalising updates on her training along with insights to her character. “She’ll tell me,” he said often. A wise man taking his lead from a powerful female.
Enable’s competitive froideur was very much in contrast to that of the jockey who rode her in all bar her first two races. But every good double act needs a flamboyant showman and there is no-one better to assume that role than Frankie Dettori.
The one sad footnote to an extraordinary story is that its final act came in the year of a global pandemic. Coronavirus has taken a terrible toll on the world but within our own small racing hub, it was a cruel twist indeed that Enable’s final four runs took place in front of a handful of raceday officials, owners and trainers. If ever there was a horse who deserved to bow out—win or lose—with the roar of an adoring crowd ringing in her enormous ears it was Enable.
Over the last few weeks of sales, a growing number of yearlings have been signed up to join Clarehaven, not to mention the blue-blooded homebreds who will be added to Gosden’s books in the months to come. Boxes will be filled and new champions will emerge, but it is nigh on impossible to replace a horse for the ages.
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