Frankel remains Timeform's highest-rated Flat horse in the firm's history, ahead of Sea-Bird, Brigadier Gerard, Tudor Minstrel and 2022 Longines World’s Best Racehorse, Flightline.
Frankel still out on his own on Timeform ratings
Not only was Flightline named the 2022 Longines World’s Best Racehorse at the awards ceremony held in London on Tuesday, but his official rating of 140 also placed him on the same pedestal as Frankel, who previously stood alone as the highest-rated Flat horse since the launch of the international classifications in 1977.
The handicappers at Timeform were similarly fulsome in their praise of Flightline during an unbeaten six-race career and, when they awarded him a rating of 143 for his spectacular victory in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar in September, he became the highest-rated horse trained in North America since Timeform first began covering racing more extensively in that jurisdiction in the early 1990s.
However, as impressive as that performance was, it still wasn’t quite enough in Timeform’s view for Flightline to scale the peak that Frankel did when he won the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot back in 2012. It was that performance which earned Frankel a Timeform rating of 147, identifying him as the highest-rated Flat horse in their history ahead of Sea-Bird (145), Brigadier Gerard and Tudor Minstrel (both 144) and, of course, Flightline.
The purpose of this article isn’t to explain why Frankel was given a Timeform rating of 147, or why Flightline was given a rating of ‘just’ 143. However, the methodology behind their respective ratings has been addressed previously in a couple of pieces which could prove useful in that debate, the links to which can be found below.
Timeform take higher view of Champion Stakes form
The Breeders’ Cup Classic won by Flightline on his swansong was named the 2022 Longines World’s Best Horse Race this week. The winner of that award is judged using the ratings of the first four finishers in each Group One, with the average for the Breeders’ Cup Classic coming out at 126.75, just ahead of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and Champion Stakes (both 124.75).
However, when comparing the official ratings with the Timeform equivalents for those three races, it’s possible to make the case that the Champion Stakes would have been just as worthy a recipient of that award. For context, the average Timeform master rating of the first four finishers in the Champion Stakes comes out at 130.75, compared to 128.75 for the Breeders’ Cup Classic and 127.5 for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
Despite finishing only fourth at Ascot, Baaeed gives the Champion Stakes the biggest boost on both fronts having been the world’s highest-rated turf horse in 2022, both officially and with Timeform. Instead, it’s with the three horses who finished ahead of him where the main discrepancies lie.
For example, when you look at the rankings among Timeform’s highest-rated older horses in Europe in 2022, Champion Stakes winner Bay Bridge (129) is in third place, behind only Baaeed (137) and Kyprios (130). On the official ratings, he had no fewer than six horses of that vintage ranked ahead of him, with Pyledriver, Real World, Torquator Tasso and Alpinista making up that list.
Similarly, Champion Stakes runner-up Adayar (128) was ranked joint-fourth on Timeform ratings – alongside Torquator Tasso and Trueshan – but he has nine horses ahead of him on the official ratings, with the likes of Hukum and State of Rest also being considered his superior.
As for the three-year-olds, My Prospero (129) was credited with a significant career-best effort by Timeform when finishing a close-up third in the Champion Stakes, a performance surpassed by only Vadeni (130) among the classic generation in Europe last year.
Once again, though, the official ratings seem to have taken a more conservative view of that form and My Prospero has four European-trained three-year-olds ranked above him in the international classifications, namely Vadeni, Desert Crown, Luxembourg and Onesto.
Confusion among Appleby's classic-winning milers
Charlie Appleby made history in 2022 by becoming the first trainer to win the English, French and Irish 2000 Guineas in the same season with three different colts, all of them very talented.
However, which of them was the most gifted seems to be a point of conjecture. The official classifications which were released on Tuesday have it as a tie between the ill-fated Newmarket winner Coroebus, who followed up in the St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot on his next start, and the Longchamp winner Modern Games, who also added to his tally at the top level when winning the Woodbine Mile and Breeders’ Cup Mile in North America in the autumn.
Timeform, on the other hand, take the view that Coroebus was comfortably the best of that trio and a rating of 127 identified him as an above-average winner of the Newmarket classic, putting up a performance which only Dawn Approach has bettered in that race since Frankel.
Even the form stablemate Native Trail showed in filling the runner-up spot would have been good enough to win a fair number of Guineas, running to a Timeform rating of 125, and he didn’t need to match that effort to defeat inferior rivals in the Irish equivalent at the Curragh three weeks later.
As for Modern Games, he was mostly winning weaker Group/Grade One races and not once did he need to run to above his Timeform rating of 122 to rack up three wins at the top level during the latest season, showing himself to be a very smart miler but not necessarily anything better.
Sadly, Coroebus didn’t get the opportunity to fulfil his potential having suffered a fatal fall in the Prix du Moulin de Longchamp, but Modern Games and Native Trail are both reportedly staying in training as four-year-olds and that ought to give us a definitive answer as to which is the better of that pair.
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