TRAINER Bobby Frankel has been working the New York and California tracks for so long – setting records and accumulating awards, titles and money – that he is close to being a legend in his own time.
Some of his credits: Hall of Fame, five Eclipse Awards as America’s outstanding trainer, 26 training titles at Hollywood Park, Santa Anita and Del Mar, record money winner in 2003 with $19 million.
For all that, he is not exactly a high profile trainer because he has never been a major player in the annual Triple Crown excitement where the glare of publicity is at its brightest.
Wayne Lukas, Bob Baffert and Nick Zito became household names because of their starring roles in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.
But after 42 years in the business and at age 67, Frankel’s Triple Crown bounty consists of just one Belmont Stakes trophy – Empire Maker in 2003. That’s it. No Derby. No Preakness. His name is seldom written in neon.
Of his achievements, however, none is more awesome – or will be more difficult to beat – than his feat in 2003 when he won 25 Grade 1 races, a world record.
Put another way, he won, on average, better than two Grade 1 races a month, every month, for 12 months.
The average trainer cannot even begin to conceive of such a thing. But in 2003 Frankel rolled them out like hot cakes – Empire Maker, Ghostzapper, Aldebaran, Peace Rules, Medaglia d’Oro, Sightseek, Spoken Fur and so forth – a season to remember.
When you think of the illustrious trainers of the United States, Europe, Australia and South Africa throughout the years, with their thousands of regally bred horses, it is startling that none can match the kid from Brooklyn who began his career walking hots at Aqueduct.
This year, however, the competition put him in the crosshairs. Europe’s greatest trainer, Aidan O’Brien, launched an assault on Frankel’s record. With 200 horses in his yards from the Coolmore breeding and buying colossus, O’Brien closed out October with 22 Grade 1 victories.
With two months to run, he showed up at the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita three weeks ago with a cavalry of eight horses, taking dead aim at five Cup Grade 1 races – and Bobby’s record. Incredibly, he blanked.
Undeterred, O’Brien, with his contract jockey Johnny Murtagh, flew to Australia a week later to run three horses in the Grade 1, $5.5 million Melbourne Cup, a two-mile lungbuster.
O’Brien’s three horses bounded out of the starting gate and, running as a trio, opened long daylight on the field in blazing fractions. They passed the nine-furlong marker 5 seconds faster than the field in last year’s Cup.
To no one’s surprise, all three were dead long before the stretch and finished 18th, 20th and 21st in a 22-horse field.
The stewards called O’Brien and his three jockeys on the carpet essentially to ask one question: What the hell were you doing out there? O’Brien told them ruefully, “We didn’t get it right.”
The bottom line: After firing everything in his arsenal in California and Australia, O’Brien limped empty-handed back to Ballydoyle in County Tipperary, still sitting on 22.
Even so, he was not through. This week, he dispatched two horses to run in France’s Criterium de Saint-Cloud, the last Grade 1 race in Europe. His horses ran one-two, but it was too late.
Final score: Frankel 25, O’Brien 23.
It was a great try by O’Brien, a terrific year, but Bobby Frankel is still the champ. Those Irish boys and their leprechauns will just have to get up earlier to knock him off the throne.
