Juddmonte | Horse Racing Free Tips

Two-Time Group 1 Winner Siskin To Target Breeders’ Cup Mile, Then Head To Stud In Japan

A Group 1 winner at both two and three, Juddmonte's Siskin could be pointed to the Breeders' Cup Mile on Nov. 7, reports racingpost.com. The sophomore son of First Defence will make the trip if he's doing well and the ground is expected to be relatively firm, according to trainer Ger Lyons.

Following the Breeders' Cup, Lyons indicated that Siskin will head to Japan to begin his stallion career in 2021.

“I'm delighted for him because he's going to get a quality book of mares that he probably wouldn't get in Ireland, but I'd have loved to have trained him at four,” Lyons told racingpost.com. “But it just goes to show you where we are in the industry when powerhouses like Juddmonte, Coolmore still sell their best horses and have to sell their best horses for economic reasons.”

Siskin won all four of his 2-year-old starts, including the G1 Keeneland Phoenix Stakes and the G2 Railway, both at the Curragh. He returned to the Curragh to begin his 3-year-old campaign, kicking off with a win in the G1 Irish 2,000 Guineas. Siskin then ran third in the G1 Sussex Stakes, beaten just 1 1/4 lengths, and was most recently fourth after missing the break in the G1 Prix du Moulin de Longchamp.

Siskin Targeting Breeders’ Cup

Khalid Abdullah’s Siskin (First Defence) is aiming at a run in the GI Breeders’ Cup Mile at Keeneland on Nov. 7, provided ground conditions suit.

“The Breeders’ Cup Mile is under serious consideration,” Juddmonte Racing Manager Teddy Grimthorpe told the TDN. “We’re concerned about two things: one is the amount of rain that’s fallen in Kentucky the last few days; we know he’s a horse that’s best on fast ground so that’s one concern. The other concern is if they continue to race on the turf track leading up to the Breeders’ Cup, if that will impact on the track adversely.

“Those are the main considerations but at the moment the horse is in good form and is aiming towards Keeneland.”

Siskin, the winner of the G1 Irish 2000 Guineas and the G1 Phoenix S., is trained by Ger Lyons, who indicated on Nick Luck’s Daily podcast on Wednesday that the horse would be retired at the end of this campaign and stand at stud in Japan. Grimthorpe declined to comment on stud plans. Siskin’s breeding rights were sold in June to an undisclosed group of breeders, with Juddmonte retaining racing rights.

From the immediate family of sires Xaar (GB) and Bated Breath (GB), Siskin was unbeaten in four starts at two last year. After his Curragh Classic score in June Siskin was third in the G1 Sussex S. and fourth in the G1 Prix du Moulin de Longchamp after missing the break in the latter.

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Enable: One For The Ages

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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Enable Retires, Will Visit Kingman

Prince Khalid Abdullah’s superstar mare Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}–Concentric {GB}, by Sadler’s Wells) has been retired from racing and will visit Kingman (GB) at Banstead Manor Stud next season.

“After consulting her trainer John Gosden and his racing manager Teddy Grimthorpe, Prince Khalid has decided that Enable will be retired from racing and will now join the Juddmonte broodmare band to be covered by Kingman in 2021,” said Juddmonte Chief Executive Officer Douglas Erskine Crum.

During an illustrious five-season career, Enable raced 19 times, winning 11 Group 1 races, including the Oaks, Irish Oaks, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe twice and three victories in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth S. In her 19 starts she accrued record earnings for a European-trained horse of £10.7-million.

Teddy Grimthorpe said, “She has brought so much joy to everyone who has been involved with her. Her elegance and forceful personality have been nurtured by John and his team at Clarehaven, especially by Imran [Shahwani] who has looked after her with such calm and devotion. In her, Frankie found a willing partner to execute her ability on the racecourse. Her CV withstands the closest of inspections. Very few can match what she has given to racing.”

Enable: A Juddmonte Homegrown Great

A fourth generation homebred for Khalid Abdullah, Enable is the fifth foal out of the Andre Fabre-trained French stakes-placed Concentric and from the first crop of the G1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth S. and G1 Coral-Eclipse winner Nathaniel. She made just one start at two, taking a mile Newcastle maiden by 3 3/4 lengths, and soon established her superiority among her generation at three. Re-bounding from a season-opening third in a Newbury conditions race, Enable took the Listed Cheshire Oaks and would not be beaten thereafter for more than two years. She pulverized her Oaks opposition by five lengths and was similarly impressive when taking the Irish Oaks by 5 1/2 lengths. She faced older males next out when taking the first of her three King Georges, and handled older mares next out when taking the G1 Yorkshire Oaks prior to her first Arc victory at Chantilly, where she had the likes of Cloth Of Stars (Ire), Ulysees (Ire), Order Of St George (Ire), Winter (Ire), Zarak (Fr) and Capri (Ire) in her wake.

Connections soon revealed that Enable would stay in training at four with a tilt at an Arc defense the top priority, but fate did its best to intervene, with a minor injury sidelining Enable for much of the season. She got going only in September with a defeat of Crystal Ocean (Ire) off an 11-month layoff in Kempton’s G3 September S.-a satisfactory but less than ideal preparation for Europe’s great race. No matter, though: with the Arc back at its traditional home at the revamped ParisLongchamp, Enable and Frankie Dettori put on a show to remember, hitting the line a short neck the better of the flying 3-year-old filly Sea Of Class (Ire). Having just gotten warmed up for the season, Enable jetted across the Atlantic to Churchill Downs for the GI Breeders’ Cup Turf, where she justified favouritism with a three-quarter length victory over that evergreen Group 1 winner Magical (Ire), with the following year’s Arc winner Waldgeist (GB) and the prior year’s Turf winner Talismanic further down the field.

Few would have blamed Khalid Abdullah at this stage should he have chosen to send Enable to the paddocks in anticipation of racing her offspring, but to the delight of racing fans the Juddmonte team soon announced that the mare would remain in training at five and go for an unprecedented third Arc win. The stage looked set last fall, with Enable having extended her win streak to include scores in the Coral-Eclipse, King George and Yorkshire Oaks. The rainfall that appeared in Paris ahead of last year’s Arc did little to dissuade most that Enable would enter the history books-she had already won Group 1s on soft going, of course-and victory looked almost a foregone conclusion when the mare stormed to the lead with 300 metres to run. But at the same time as the very soft ground began to blight her brilliance, a true mile-and-a-half Group 1 horse in Waldgeist was flying down the middle of the course, and he snatched the lead with just 50 metres to go, with Enable settling for second in an excellent effort.

History had spoken and it was not to be for Enable, and the Arc would go on without a treble winner. Or would it? Weeks after the mare’s first defeat since the first race of her 3-year-old campaign, the team at Juddmonte once again stunned the racing world with the supremely sporting decision that Enable would give it another try in 2020.

Enable’s followers could be forgiven for being discouraged by a season-opening second to Ghaiyyath (Ire) in the Coral-Eclipse, but as the season wore on, the 6-year-old mare rounded into fitness and Ghaiyyath justified that victory with a career-best score in the Juddmonte International. Albeit against just two rivals, Enable recorded another historic treble when taking her third King George, but that accomplishment stayed largely in the shadows of what could come at ParisLongchamp 10 weeks later. Choosing to bypass a clash with the new 3-year-old filly wonder Love (Ire) in the Yorkshire Oaks, Team Enable opted for the warm up that had worked so well in 2018 and again went the route of the September S., which she won by seven lengths.

This year’s Arc was framed as a clash between Enable and Love, but as the week leading into the race wore on far more drama unfolded than could have been anticipated. Biblical rainfall in Paris quickly deteriorated the course, and three days out Love with withdrawn. As Longchamp continued to dissolve into a quagmire, Love’s four stablemates set for the Arc joined her on the sidelines after becoming embroiled in a case of feed contamination. As the ground turned heavy, the most testing Enable had ever faced, the pace fell out of the race with that unfortunate withdrawal of Sovereign (Ire) and Serpentine (Ire).

While Enable put in her typical valiant effort without ever looking like winning in trying conditions, her first and only off- the-board finish takes none of the shine off her illustrious record.

Dettori Hails ‘One of the Great Mares of Our Generation’

Speaking in an emotional interview on At The Races on Monday, Dettori paid tribute to “one of the great mares of our generation.”

“Lord Grimthorpe rang me last night,” he said. “Obviously I shed a tear as I was a bit emotional. I went to see her this morning. I accept the decision and she doesn’t owe anyone anything. It has been a great journey for 3 1/2 years. She has touched my heart and has been one of the great mares of our generation. She has won 11 Group 1s and has simply been amazing.”

Dettori described Enable’s 2017 Arc win as her best performance, while also giving note to her second King George win, in which she prevailed in a stirring stretch drive from Crystal Ocean, and the Oaks.

“The best performance was the first Arc,” Dettori said. “I knew we had the race won by the chateau in Chantilly, she was just in unbeatable form that day. The King George against Crystal Ocean stands out–she had every chance of throwing in the towel and she didn’t. The Oaks would be the other standout race as that is when she first really burst on to the scene.”

Dettori said he felt her Arc run was her last in the race’s immediate aftermath.

“After walking back in after the Arc I was trying to enjoy it, as I knew in my heart it was going to be her last race,” he said. “It is a tough task after finishing sixth in the Arc to have one more dance, so I half-expected this decision.

“It would have been unfair on her. Maybe she is now telling us something, but she has left the game in one piece and luckily for me she is still in Newmarket, so I can still see her. I will go feed her Polos at the stud. I’ve been begging John to put me on her one last time in a morning so I can give her my last goodbye.”

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