sad, but not the death of hope.

​As with most people, for a moment, an annoyingly short moment, it looked for all the world that the fairy-tale would become reality. It was not to be. But that is sport and why we are willingly enslaved by its majesty. It didn’t happen, despite all our hopes and prayers that it would. The worst aspect of Sunday, though, was that, as good and deserving as he was, Waldgeist is not a super-horse. He is honest as the day is long. He turns up and does the job he was bred for without complaint, without making a great show of himself. As Arc winners goes, he is average and that is where the disappointment, for me, lies. If Sottsas had won or Japan there would be grounds for believing they are aspiring for true greatness as four-year-olds, if given the opportunity. But Enable was humbled by a five-year-old, a horse she had beaten on the three previous occasions they had met.
But as Ted Walsh once famously said, horse racing is neither Hollywood nor Disney. Horse Racing can be life at its rawest. That’s an element of the sport that makes the sport as addictive as it is.
This will not happen, I strongly suspect, but there remains on the planet one horse who could still win three Arcs. Enable. Yes, it was asking for the moon to expect Prince Khalid to keep her in training as a five-year-old and in asking for her to be kept in training as a six-year-old we are doubtless entering the fantasy world of Disney. But why not. As I said, she remains the most likely horse to win the holy grail of three arcs and only failed on this occasions due to the almost heavy ground.
John Gosden, as truthful and pragmatic a man as you will ever find, often will say that Enable loves her work, loves going out with the string on to the Heath and that on the day after the King George & Queen Elisabeth she made her annoyance known when she taken for a walk and pick of grass when Gosden’s  first lot went out for proper exercise on the gallops. She enjoys being a racehorse and insists on going out first lot and not kept hanging around. It would seen unfair on her to take her out-of-training when in mind and body she remains fit, healthy and still eager for the fray.
If I was a betting man, which I am not, I would put money on not seeing her on a racecourse again. They might be tempted to take her to the Breeders Cup but with the unacceptable large number of fatalities at Santa Anita in recent months I can’t see Prince Khalid taking the risk of Enable being added to the casualty list. If she were mine, I would keep her in training another year. Flat racing needs her, especially if one of Godolphin’s Shamardal superstar two-year-olds go on to be superstar three-year-olds. What a match-up that would be, Enable versus Pinatubo in the Eclipse, for example. But we should not get ahead of ourselves. Sporting dreams can be as easily crushed as a grape under the heel of the bogey-man.
Perhaps, like Charles Englehard, owner of Nijinsky, who, dying of cancer, retired his great horse as a three-year-old in hope of still being alive when his sons and daughters were on the ground, Prince Khalid is keener to see what offspring she produces than to have her add to her haul of Group 1’s. And at some point, as Aiden O’Brien regularly points out, the genes of the noble greats have to be passed on to the next generation, and as a fourth generation Juddmonte racehorse Enable is a very precious commodity to have on the roster. There will never be another like her. Though with Juddmonte, who can be sure. After Frankel, it was very long odds they would produce a horse to be spoken of in the same sentence as the wonder-horse.
Yet, and again I say this more in hope than expectation, even with having bred Frankel and other great racehorses, it would be a major feather in the cap of Juddmonte if it can be boasted that they and they alone bred the only three-time winner of the Arc. I ask again. Why not? It is arguable that Winx was a superior racehorse in her final year on the track than any year that preceded it. What was she, seven when she retired? Enable would only be six next season.
In trepidation I for one will be keeping my fingers crossed over the coming weeks for the announcement of Enable’s future. And remember, though Frankie is of the opinion he has ridden her for the last time, neither Lord Grimthorpe nor John Gosden has said one way or the other about retiring the great mare or keeping her in training. I just hope the outpouring of affection shown to the mare by the public and how much it would mean to them and the greater good it would do the sport might, just might, sway influence Prince Khalid’s difficult decision.