The greatest performance by a throughbred in 300 years of the breed?
Champion juvenile the previous season, the 2011 2,000 Guineas was the ultimate day of reckoning for Frankel - the first Classic of the British season, arguably the pre-eminent stallion-making race and the target that trainer Sir Henry Cecil and owner Prince Khalid Abdulla and Juddmonte would have had in mind every since Frankel made his winning debut the previous August at Newmarket.
A phenonemal talent, Frankel was also wilful and headstrong and had proven tough to channel to the maxium of his awesome abuility in his juvenile career and those traits were still a considerable cause for concern early in his career-defining three-year-old campaign. Frankel's wide draw in the 2000 Guineas - on the other side of the track from his pacemaker - had the potential to ruin Classic aspirations on the wide expanse of the Rowley Mile at Newmarket.
What happened next was truly extraordinary and unquestionably one of the finest performances ever seen in the 300 years of the thoroughbred. Even in an unbeaten 14-race career as glittering as Frankel's, this performance - given the circumstances - could be potentially argued as the finest and most remarkable of all.
