Item evokes memories of Frankel - and Top Cees

Horse Racing

Sun August 23, 2026 · 7h ago

John Ingles looks into the pedigree of last week's Juddmonte International winner Item.

Item's victory in the Juddmonte silks at York brought back memories of being present on that special day 14 years earlier when the sponsors had last been successful in the Juddmonte International.

Item is a son of the 2012 winner Frankel, though his last-gasp win under Colin Keane had little in common with Tom Queally's armchair ride on his outstanding sire back then. In a race widely billed as a match between Ombudsman and Constitution River, Item was also a much less expected winner, starting at 10/1 against rather than 10/1 on as his father had done.

Most Juddmonte winners are already established Group 1 horses but Item, who was down the field on his only previous try at the top level in the Derby, became just the second winner of the race this century without a Group 1 win to his name already. The other was Arabian Queen who at 50/1 was the longest priced winner in the history of the race when inflicting a first defeat on Golden Horn in 2015. The Derby remains Item’s only defeat in six starts, and his record on the Knavesmire can’t be faulted, having won the Dante and the York Stakes over course and distance on his previous visits.

Sir Henry Cecil pictured with Frankel at York

While Frankel’s owner and trainer, Khalid Abdullah and Sir Henry Cecil – who had also been successful the year before when Twice Over (also winner of the York Stakes beforehand) had gotten the better of the same connections' Midday – are no longer with us, the present-day Juddmonte empire is in rude health, both the breeding side of the operation, headed up by Frankel, and the racing side, thanks to a summer of Group 1 successes for Item and his stablemates Blue Bolt and Kalpana, winner of the Yorkshire Oaks 24 hours later. Their trainer Andrew Balding, a relative newcomer to Juddmonte’s training roster, was the subject of this column recently after the latter’s King George win.

As noted there, Kalpana’s origins can be traced back to the days when Khalid Abdullah was laying the foundations of the Juddmonte broodmare band. But the operation needs new blood from time to time and, of course, not every filly such a vast enterprise produces can be kept for breeding purposes. Ironically, last year’s Juddmonte International winner Ombudsman, odds-on for a repeat but only fourth this time, is out of a Juddmonte cast-off, Syndicate, as recounted in this column a year ago.

Item represents that new blood as, while he is a home-bred, he doesn’t come from one of the long-established Abdullah families. His dam Capla Temptress must be a rare, if not unique, member of the Juddmonte broodmare band as she was a private purchase during her racing career. Starting off with Marco Botti, she won her first two races at two at Chelmsford and Newmarket before her first change of ownership which saw her race in the colours of Team Valor that were made famous by the Kentucky Derby and Dubai World Cup winner Animal Kingdom.

Capla Temptress was third in the Sweet Solera Stakes for her new owners before going on to Grade 1 success in North America when winning the Natalma Stakes at Woodbine in Canada. A few more transatlantic crossings followed before she settled in the States with Bill Mott for whom she put up a career-best effort (Timeform rating 111) to win the Grade 3 My Charmer Stakes over a mile at Gulfstream on her final start at three. Capla Temptress remained in training with Mott at four, by which time she’d been the subject of a private sale to Juddmonte for whom Mott already trained.

While Capla Temptress only added a listed success at Del Mar to her record that season, she was mainly bought with a broodmare career and visits to Juddmonte’s top stallions in mind. Before the mating with Frankel that resulted in Item, she produced two winners by Kingman. Gelding Cabrit was just a maiden winner in Abu Dhabi, but filly Temptable has shown useful form, winning a listed race at Saint-Cloud for Francis Graffard last autumn before being sent to Mott this year.

Item pictured after winning the Juddmonte International

Capla Temptress, who is by Lope de Vega, does have some Juddmonte blood herself as she’s out of a daughter of Dansili. Lope de Vega is also the sire of Almaqam, whom Item caught in the last strides of the Juddmonte International, and the Frankel x Lope de Vega cross has been advertised this year by another well-made chestnut Benvenuto Cellini, he too bouncing back from a down-the-field finish in the Derby (unofficially, of course) for a Group 1 victory in the Irish Derby and a good third in the King George.

Capla Temptress traces back to her great grandam Sing Softly who was a foundation mare for another very successful owner-breeder, as well as one-time trainer, Peter Harris. Pendley Farm, Harris’s stud, dispersed its stock at Tattersalls in 2010, including selling Mrs Beeton and Eliza Acton, the dam and grandam of Capla Temptress, for 16,500 guineas and 55,000 guineas respectively. Sing Softly, trained by Henry Cecil, was a smart filly (rated 112) who won the Pretty Polly Stakes and Lancashire Oaks at three when also placed in the Ribblesdale and Park Hill.

Among good winners in the Harris colours descending from Sing Softly were the listed or Group 3 winners Supreme Sound, Stotsfold, Leporello, Poppy Carew and Calypso Grant. Supreme Sound won the Winter Derby, while Stotsfold’s wins included the Brigadier Gerard Stakes. Notable winners for other owners tracing back to Sing Softly include last year’s Cambridgeshire winner Boiling Point, also a listed winner at Goodwood this season.

But perhaps the best-known of Item’s family members risks getting overlooked in his pedigree because he wasn’t a black-type winner. Still, Top Cees (a full brother to Item’s great grandam Eliza Acton), originally trained by Harris, became a useful performer both as a stayer on the Flat and as a hurdler for Lynda Ramsden for whom he won a Coral Cup at Cheltenham and two Chester Cups. But there was also some notoriety about him thanks to his controversial run at Newmarket prior to his first Chester Cup win in 1995.

Channel 4 Racing Team discuss The Top Cees Affair,concluding with The Lynda Ramsden Interview.HRL

Timeform’s report on the race noted that Top Cees, ridden for the first time by Kieren Fallon, ‘left the strong impression he should have won in putting up one of the most eye-catching performances we’ve seen in a handicap for a long time…the stewards reportedly gave connections ‘the benefit of the doubt’ after they explained the horse needs holding up as long as possible and that ‘gaps didn’t appear’, though the decision to order a routine dope test on the horse was too funny for words’.

‘Very much one to keep an eye on’ was Timeform’s conclusion on Top Cees’ Newmarket fifth before he bolted up by five lengths at Chester three weeks later, a victory which Timeform felt ‘must have left the Newmarket stewards feeling distinctly uncomfortable; it’s a poor reflection that so far at least, it has been left to Press and TV to give the matter and all its inconsistencies a proper airing’. Alastair Down’s article in The Sporting Life headed ‘Contempt for the punter’, which accused connections of stopping the horse at Newmarket, triggered a High Court libel case brought against the paper’s owners Mirror Group which resulted in damages totalling £195,000, plus costs, being awarded to the Ramsdens and Fallon.

There’s more than just a pedigree link between Top Cees and Item, though. Lynda Ramsden’s assistant at the time was none other than Andrew Balding, and when Ramsden retired, it wasn’t just Balding who returned to Kingsclere to work for his father Ian, Top Cees made the move too. It was from there, at the age of nine, that Top Cees gained one more big win in the 1999 Cesarewitch.

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