He wouldn’t have got anywhere near close enough to lay a glove on Quick Ransom. As for Bijou D’Inde, the St James’s Palace Stakes winner of 1996 would have left him for dust.
When it comes to the affections of his owner, however, Letsbefrank has earned a place in Stuart Morrison’s heart right up there alongside the two best horses the retired Glasgow lawyer admits he has been hugely privileged to own.
Letsbefrank is rapidly becoming a legend in his own right. Certainly a Sky Bet Sunday Series one. Five wins in his career, all of them in Sunday Series races. Two years ago he became the first to scoop the £100,000 bonus put up for grabs by Sky Bet to connections of the first runner to win three times. While Spring Is Sprung followed suit for another long-standing northern owner in John Blackburn and trainer Paul Midgley 12 months ago, Letsbefrank now stands on the cusp of another slice of history as the first horse to win the bonus twice.
Last-gasp victories at Musselburgh and Hamilton Park, both under 5lb claimer Lauren Young, have thrust Letsbefrank into pole position heading to Thirsk for round four of the series this weekend. As the sole two-time winner so far, Jim Goldie’s charge has a free run at taking the chequered flag and banking the six-figure bonus cheque in its entirety. Should he miss, the six-year-old will get another shot when the action resumes following a two-and-a-half month hiatus for the series finale at Pontefract on August 16.
Naturally, Morrison and Goldie would love to seal the deal this weekend, and avoid having to tip-toe their way through the summer trying to avoid a swingeing rise from the handicapper in the interim that could scupper even the best-laid plans for 'Ponte'.
Morrison admits to feeling a little jittery ahead of Letsbefrank’s date with destiny. But he at least has a couple of welcome distractions to divert his attention in the build-up, if only momentarily. Morrison said: “It’s my grandson Jamie’s fifth birthday on Saturday, then my daughter Carol’s on Monday. So one way or another, my wife Christine and I have a busy weekend lined up!
“To be in this position again with Frank is unbelievable, really. To win the bonus once exceeded all of our expectations, especially as things didn’t look too promising after we’d initially bought Letsbefrank. He’s a big horse, who was very backward and needed time to mature. We gave him that time and just had to hope for the best. Thankfully it worked.”
Not that last year was all plain sailing. Far from it. Letsbefrank went winless in nine runs, often losing an irretrievable amount of ground from the gates. It wasn’t until his tenth and final start at Hamilton that the son of Frankel - who’d already been gelded prior to his sole run for original trainer John Butler - showed some of his old sparkle, with Young aboard for the first time.
Timeform didn’t go quite as far as allotting him the infamous ‘squiggle’ that denotes a horse with potential temperament issues, but their race readers regularly commented he’d become a risky betting proposition. As for Morrison, his take was that it was simply a case of Letsbefrank’s bonus-bagging exploits catching up with him.
He added: “Frank’s final three races in 2024 were all over two miles - and he was involved in a photo finish in each of them. Even though he won the last of those at Pontefract to land the bonus, I’m not sure he truly stays that far and he ended up having some hard races as a result.
“I think he was still feeling the effects of those well into last year. Again, for me that comes back to him still being a very late-maturing horse. It was only that final race at Hamilton, when Lauren rode him for the first time, that we saw the old Frank again. He finished fifth, but he was beaten only half-a-length in that memorable race when there was a photo finish involving five of the six runners.”
Starting this season 7lb lower in the ratings than for his bonus-clinching victory at Pontefract in 2024, Letsbefrank and Young have proved an irresistible combination. While a 20/1 success on his reappearance at Musselburgh was a welcome surprise, Morrison admits he was already beginning to get sweaty palms heading to Hamilton a fortnight ago.
He said: “We knew he’d come down the ratings and we were hoping that he’d be able to win a race again this season. But after he won at Musselburgh, doing well to come from as far back as he did, we went to Hamilton thinking he had a great chance to win again. So, yes, I did feel a bit of pressure that day.
“To be fair to Lauren, she certainly didn’t seem to. She gave him a cool ride. When Frank lost ground coming out of the stalls again, she didn’t panic and just allowed him to get into a rhythm that suits him. Once they started motoring up the Hamilton hill, I knew they would get there in time.
“Credit to Lauren because has done a lot of work with Frank over the winter, especially in the stalls. He’s a big horse physically and one thing he doesn’t like is feeling confined. Last year he started to become very nervous and panicky in the stalls, which was why he kept starting so slowly.
“This season he’s also been wearing a Monty Roberts rug which prevents him from feeling the sides of the stalls rubbing against him. Along with the work Lauren has done, that’s made a difference.”
As a middle-of-the-road handicapper, Letsbefrank wouldn’t lace the boots of Quick Ransom or Bijou D’Inde. The first horse Morrison owned outright, Quick Ransom swatted away 21 rivals to win the 1992 Ebor for Mark Johnston and Dean McKeown; another 24 to nab the 1993 November Handicap under Jason Weaver; then 19 more to plunder the 1994 Northumberland Plate. He also took Morrison on two trips Down Under for the Melbourne Cup, finishing fourth on the second of those in 1995.
Morrison recalled: “I’d had horses in partnerships and things like that, but Quick Ransom was the first I owned in my own name. He was an amazing horse. As a small owner, to win races like the Ebor, the Plate and the November Handicap was almost surreal.
“I ended up selling two-thirds of him to an Australian owner called Wayne Heathcote, an art dealer who was desperate for a good stayer to run in the Melbourne Cup. I know it gets called the ‘race that stops a nation’ - but it really does. They were amazing experiences.”
It will be 30 years next month since Bijou D’Inde, also trained by fellow Scot Johnston, won the St James’s Palace. He’d been chinned in a three-way photo in Mark Of Esteem’s 2000 Guineas, then finished fourth to Spinning World in the Irish version. But the Cadeaux Genereux colt got his revenge on both of those Classic winners as the duo fended off French Guineas hero Ashkalani in a race for the ages.
Morrison said: “I remember Mark telling me that was the first time in something like 40 or 50 years that the winners of the English, Irish and French Guineas had all run against one another at Ascot. Never in a million years did I ever dream that we would win a Group 1 at Royal Ascot, but Bijou beat them all on merit.
“About a year earlier, I drove down to Middleham for the first gallop Bijou D’Inde did as a two-year-old. He was working with a couple of highly-rated horses owned by one of Mark’s Arab owners. After Bijou breezed by both of them towards the end of the gallop, the owner’s racing manager turned to me and said, ‘Mr Morrison, that was either a fluke or you’re a very lucky owner.’ I won’t tell you who it was. But it wasn’t a fluke. And, yes, I’ve been unbelievably lucky as an owner.”
Even more so should Letsbefrank come up trumps again this weekend.
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