Enable is recovering well from her exertions when she was a runaway winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Chantilly, giving real reason for hope the star filly will be kept in training next year.
John Gosden, her trainer who has won two of the last three Arcs, estimates a decision on Enable’s future could be taken any time from the end of next week.
“She’s in great form, she got back in very good order,” Gosden said between lots at the famous Book 1 sale at Tattersalls in Newmarket, generally regarded as the most important yearling auction in Europe. “She’s had a nice little walk and a lead-out yesterday, and a nice little walk and a trot and a pick of grass today. She has one cut on a hind leg from the race but when you run in a big Arc, you’re lucky to get away with that.”
Enable still figures in some betting lists for a couple of races on Champions Day at Ascot a fortnight on Saturday but her trainer squashed any suggestion she might be asked to run again so soon after her moment of greatest triumph on Sunday. “Obviously she’s not running again this year,” Gosden said of Enable, who has won five Group One races in the past four months.
“She’s done everything that we could begin to dream of and she’s done it so well. We’ll see how she is over the next 10 days and then Prince Khalid will make a decision as to whether she races next year.”
Gosden is too diplomatic to open those negotiations through the medium of the press but there is no doubt he would love to have her for another summer’s racing. “She’s really only had 10 months’ racing in her life and, to that extent, she’s had one good season. It would be wonderful if she was in great order and could race again next season. I think she’d be a bit of a crowd-puller.
“Before the Arc, she weighed more than she did for her first race of the year, which is pretty unusual, very unusual. She’s got a great constitution. She obviously lost weight from the race and the trip, she just went through the Channel Tunnel twice, after all. We eat on the way, they don’t eat quite so much!” Gosden revealed he had been affected by some of the pre-Arc nerves radiating from various pundits, who fretted that no three-year-old filly trained in Britain had ever won the race. “You have an awful lot of pressure, with a lovely filly like that. A lot is expected and then everyone saying: ‘Oooh, is she racing too late in the year, has she been doing too much?’ She was expressing herself as if she was in top order. My initial reaction was massive relief and then great joy for the filly to have achieved what she’s achieved and for someone like Prince Khalid to breed such a filly. It’s not easily done.”
Gosden and another of his owners, Anthony Oppenheimer, surprised many by opting to skip the Arc with Cracksman but the consequence is they now have the clear favourite for the Champion Stakes. Gosden confirmed the colt will be aimed at that Ascot race and is “in great order”. Of the step back in distance to 10 furlongs, he said: “He’s won at that distance, he’s strengthened, he’s sharpened a lot, so I think he’ll be fine.” Gosden is not just buying on his own account at these sales. He is also advising Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation and is credited by some observers with guiding Godolphin away from its previous policy of boycotting the progeny of stallions based at Coolmore Stud. “The past is the past and we all move forward,” was all Gosden was willing to say about that, moments after standing with the Godolphin team as a son of Galileo, out of the Guineas runner-up Jacqueline Quest, was knocked down to them for 400,000 guineas. By the end of the day, Godolphin had paid £1.8m for three Galileo yearlings.
Wednesday’s racing tips, by Chris Cook
Nottingham
1.50 Little Boy Blue 2.20 Alba Del Sole (nap) 2.55 Sageness 3.25 Ivy Leaguer 4.00 Harmonise 4.30 Hedging 5.05 Quatrieme Ami 5.35 Father McKenzie
Salisbury
2.00 Carp Kid 2.30 Tullyallen 3.05 Algam 3.35 The Daley Express 4.10 Almoreb 4.40 Incredible Dream
Bangor
2.10 Big Penny 2.45 Ben Arthur 3.15 Bedrock 3.50 Abbotswood (nb) 4.20 Capitoul 4.55 Walden Prince
Kempton
5.40 Treacherous 6.10 L’Explora 6.40 Left Alone 7.10 Dragon Mountain 7.40 Don’t Give Up 8.10 Ply 8.40 Corredordel Viento 9.10 Mizen Master
