Little value in Frankel sees Dream Ahead gain new friends

If the hyperbole is to be believed, this three-year-old giant cannot be beaten in the St James’s Palace Stakes – the day one highlight of Royal Ascot’s 300th anniversary meeting – and his eight rivals should not even make the journey to Berkshire.

That maybe so. Yet, while there is every reason to believe that Frankel will extend his winning sequence to seven races, the newly-knighted Cecil is taking nothing for granted ahead of his thoroughbred’s career-defining race.

He has every reason to be cautious – even though some racing pundits appear more pre-occupied on whether the stuffy Royal enclosure will reverberate to ‘three cheers for Sir Henry’ or ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’ shortly before 4pm today.

While Cecil is right when he says that racing needs its heroes, and Frankel is, potentially, the best that he has trained in a stellar career, three caveats should be applied before punters decide whether the measly odds of 2-5 on offer any value.

Can Frankel really improve on his last outing, the Qipco 2000 Guineas, when he simply galloped his rivals into submission and rendered his pacemaker redundant after 10 strides?

Can Cecil’s colt handle the soft going or will the conditions play into the hands of dual Group One winner Dream Ahead?

Can Frankel, sired by 2001 Derby winner Galileo, handle the sharp bend that precedes the short home straight at Ascot, having previously excelled on straight galloping courses like Newbury, Newmarket and Doncaster?

Cecil has few doubts as he looks to celebrate his Knighthood in style and emulate Sir Gordon Richards who won his first and only Epsom Derby days after being bestowed with the same title in 1953.

“I’d love him to continue to be a champion because racing needs horses like Sea The Stars, Mill Reef and Arkle,” said the trainer. “I think it lifts the whole industry as people not really involved begin to catch on and show interest. I’ve had to bring him back from the Guineas carefully. Because of his long stride he gets himself there quicker than a lazy, idle horse.

“He is likely to get a little warm but that’s just because he is slightly highly-strung. I don’t like the fact that he sweats, and he probably will between his back legs, but he does it. I’ve got his full-brother and he does it too.

“He’s actually warm blooded because when it was cold we put a rug on him like we did with all the others and we could see on the CCTV that he was trying to pull it over his head because he was too warm, so now we just give him a sheet. Everybody has tried to make out he’s some sort of monster and that’s he’s very highly-strung. He’s not really, he just wants to get on with things.”

However, Cecil is fully aware that nothing in racing is as straightforward as it looks.

He added: “In any Group One you’ve got to respect the opposition. Marco Botti’s horse (Excelebration) has improved from when Frankel beat him at Newbury in April.

“I thought Richard Hannon’s horse Dubawi Gold was unlucky in the Irish 2000 Guineas and there’s the Japanese horse Grand Prix Boss, who is very powerful.

“There’s no such thing as a certainty, but I’ll be disappointed if Frankel doesn’t win. I’ve been disappointed many times in my life before, though.”

Excelebration was beaten four lengths by Frankel in the Greenham Stakes at Newbury before landing the Group Two German 2,000 Guineas.

As the Greenham was Excelebration’s first race for nine months, his trainer Marco Botti has good reason to expect another fine display.

The in-form Botti said: “I think he’s in good shape and he’s been working well. Obviously, we all know how good Frankel is.”

Even connections of Grand Prix Boss, Japan’s champion two-year-old before winning Tokyo’s NHK Mile Cup in May, are aware of Frankel’s fearsome reputation.

Koji Kubo, assistant to trainer Yoshito Yahagi, said: “Frankel is a superstar, even in Japan everyone knows how good he is, but Japanese racing fans are excited to have a runner against him.”

Like Kubo, Malton trainer Richard Fahey was certainly not talking up the prospects of his stable star Wootton Bassett, who lost his unbeaten record in last month’s French 2000 Guineas following a bad draw.

His worry is whether champion jockey Paul Hanagan can settle his charge who, like Frankel, is content to bowl along at the front of affairs. The danger is that Wootton Bassett is a spent force before the crucial turn for home where race positioning will be critical. “We’ll know exactly how good he is after today,” said Fahey.

Yet the ‘forgotten’ horse is David Simcock’s Dream Ahead, an 18-1 prospect. He was a scintillating winner of the Middle Park Stakes at Newmarket last year for St Leger-winning jockey William Buick, before being put in his place by Frankel in the Dewhurst last October.

There were legitimate excuses – it was the horse’s second Group One race in a fortnight and the Middle Park had left its mark. The son of Diktat has not been seen in racecourse action since because of unsuitably fast ground.

“I am very happy with him but he could be a little ring rusty,” said the trainer.

There is no reason why Frankel should not win, though it will take a freakish performance for him to put in a performance that eclipises his Guineas triumph after connections rightly swerved the Epsom Derby. From a betting proposition, however, Frankel offers no value – unlike Dream Ahead who has the form, ground and jockey to give the favourite a genuine run for his money.

Winning record of Cecil’s hero

Sir Henry Cecil’s wonderhorse honours the memory of Bobby Frankel – the trainer who rose from the streets of Brooklyn, New York, to become one of the all-time greats of American racing. He died in November 2009, aged 68, after a year-battle against lymphoma. But the illness did not prevent his California stable from accruing $10m of prize money in eight out of nine years between 2000 and 2008.

Frankel’s horses won 3,654 races from 17,657 starts and his prize money tally of $228m placed him second all-time on the money list to D. Wayne Lukas. The Kentucky Derby was the only major race to elude Cecil’s hero. He trained six Breeders’ Cup wins, the last of which was the 2008 heroine Ventura.