Ascot Champions Day: Frankel son Cracksman eyes last shot at glory

He was distracted by the “girls” when beaten on his last outing at Ascot, but Frankel’s son Cracksman will be looking to finish his racing career in style on the most valuable day of racing in the UK calendar.

Ascot’s $5.67 million Champions Day brings down the curtain on the British flat racing season with five end-of-season championship races featuring some of the cream of Europe’s equine talent.

The showpiece of Saturday’s blue riband meeting is the $1.7 million middle-distance Champion Stakes in which holder Cracksman will be bidding to go out on a high in what could be his final race before a life at stud.

The John Gosden-trained four-year-old was from the great Frankel’s first crop of foals and the big hope to land his illustrious father his first Classic winner as a sire.

And although Cracksman fell just short of a top prize (he was third in last year’s Derby) a second Champion Stakes, which his father won in 2012, would cap a still impressive career.

Cracksman, who was rated as the world’s best three-year-old after a string of Group One wins in 2017, has won more than $1.8 million on the track.

It was his Champion Stakes victory 12 months ago – the first Group One win for a Frankel offspring – which enabled Frankel’s stud fee to rise from $165,000 to $230,000 per cover.

Frankel clinched his 14th and final consecutive victory in the Champion Stakes in 2012 to take his career race winnings to nearly $4 million. He retired to stud in Suffolk in 2013.

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Frankie Dettori rides Cracksman to victory in the QIPCO Champion Stakes on British Champions Day at Ascot in 2017.

‘Fabulous horse’

Despite a shock defeat on his last outing at Royal Ascot in June, the recent rain in the south of England will suit Cracksman, who will team up again with veteran Italian jockey Frankie Dettori.

“It’s not been an easy year for Cracksman and the driest summer since 1976 was no help to him but he’s a fabulous horse. I don’t think he’s descended, so much as he’s hit rather a plateau,” the prolific Newmarket-based Gosden told AtTheRaces.

“He’s in top order. It’s hard to criticize a horse who has won two Group Ones this year and been second in a Prince of Wales at Royal Ascot in a very good time on fast ground, but he wasn’t quite mentally with us that day.

“He got very interested in the girls [fillies] coming back from the Windsor Forest [Stakes]. They were walking back into the stables and on a hot day and were sweaty. He obviously caught a little whiff of them and was rather keen to get over the hedge and say hello to them.”

The mile-and-a quarter Champion Stakes, with a first prize of $969,000, was first run in 1877 and held at Newmarket before it transferred to Ascot in 2011 as the culmination of the middle-distance season and the jewel in the crown of the newly created British Champions Day.

Sir Michael Stoute’s Crystal Ocean and Aidan O’Brien’s 2017 St Leger winner Capri, who was fifth in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe behind Gosden’s Enable, could be the big challengers.

Longchamp racecourse is back with a bang ...

Longchamp Racecourse —

An aerial photograph of Longchamp showing Paris and the Eiffel Tower in the distance. The racecourse has undergone a $145M revamp.

The new grandstand was designed by architect Dominique Perrault, who took his inspiration from galloping horses.

It now offers "transparent" views both east towards Paris and the Eiffel Tower, and west across the River Seine.

Perrault is the architect who is working on the athletes village for the Paris 2024.

It is hoped that the grandstand will attract business when racing events aren't being staged.

Longchamp's redevelopment began in October 2015.

The Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe moved to Chantilly for two years while upgrades at Longchamp were carried out. This year's Arc meeting, on October 6 and 7, will feature 16 flat races, including nine of Group 1 status.

Longchamp Racecourse first opened in 1857 -- Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie attended.

Longchamp Racecourse became home to the prestigious Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in 1920, when horses would compete equally without any handicapping from previous results.

The name "Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe" was chosen to pay tribute to the French soldiers who served in WWI.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, visited Longchamp Racecourse in 1972 during an official visit to France.

Each year the grandstands at Longchamp Racecourse fill with the "crème de la crème" of European society.

Frankie Dettori celebrates after riding Enable to win the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Chantilly Racecourse on October 1, 2017 in Chantilly, France.

Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe: Europe's richest race returns to Longchamp

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READ: Enable, Dettori and Gosden team up for Arc repeat

Roaring Lion

Because of the softening ground, Cracksman’s stablemate Roaring Lion – a winner of three Group Ones this season – will be redirected from the Champion Stakes to the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, Europe’s richest mile race with $1.4 million up for grabs.

The straight mile race, also won by Frankel on the inaugural Champions Day in 2011, formed the third leg of Dettori’s “Magnificent Seven” when he achieved the unprecedented feat of winning all seven races on the card.

But while Dettori rode Gosden’s Persuasive to victory last year, Roaring Lion will be ridden by in-form Irish jockey Oisin Murphy.

Roaring Lion’s entry gives Gosden potentially the favorite in four of the five main races, with Stradivarius in the Long Distance Cup and Lah Ti Dar in the Fillies and Mares Stakes.

READ: Stradivarius scoops $1.28M bonus in virtuoso season

One race that could elude Gosden is the Sprint Stakes, in which trainer James Fanshawe’s The Tin Man, the 2016 winner, is the favorite.

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“To have a runner with a good chance in one of the big races on QIPCO British Champions Day is exciting and what we all strive for,” said the Newmarket-based Fanshawe.