Frankel: Universally challenged

Frankel: Can he overcome his final challenge?

Phar Lap's story was that he lifted a nation during the Great Depression, while Seabiscuit's was his humble beginnings. Racing movies need adversity, so there's little chance of Frankel going to Hollywood, given how easy he's had it. Or has he? Jamie Lynch explores ahead of Frankel's farewell race.

'This is the worst thing ever written; it makes no sense.'

The Columbia TriStar executive who slated the script, and therefore passed up the film, inadvertently passed up approximately $210 million, the amount grossed worldwide by Pulp Fiction. The misjudged judges who described the Pulp Fiction concept as 'too demented' might just as easily dismiss the Frankel screenplay, when I've put the finishing touches to it, as 'too perfect'.

Too perfect a story, too easy a time and too smooth a journey. Not the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster, they'd say, before perhaps suggesting some tinkering with the truth to add an against-all-odds element, instead of the all-odds-on formalities, such as having Frankel tamed from the wild rather than bred and compiled, or being owned by a pauper rather than a prince, or just something - anything - to make it a challenge.

They'd also probably pooh-pooh my casting recommendations of Jeremy Irons as Sir Henry Cecil, James McAvoy as Tom Queally and, the 'gimme', Omar Sharif as Prince Khalid.

With his perfect record, it's all too easy to see Frankel's climb to the pinnacle as smooth and challenge-free. But there have been challenges for him, many of them in fact, as we'll go through, and his biggest one is still to come, befitting of a champion's climax.

Challenge #1: Frankel v himself. What turned out to be youthful exuberance did, at one stage, look as if it might be more of a deep-rooted problem. It wasn't so much a case of running before you can walk as going full pelt before you can gallop. Frankel, destined for superstardom, wanted to get there a little too quickly, and his eagerness in his early races was a challenge that he and his management team had to overcome. The antidote? Bizarrely, allowing him to just let rip in the Guineas and get it out of his system seemed to do the trick.

Challenge #2: Frankel v a misjudged ride. When he's good he's very, very good but when he's bad he can still win a Group 1. Frankel's worst is better than most other horses' best, as proven in the St James's Palace Stakes when Frankel underperformed appreciably, all because, for the one and only time, Queally got it wrong. Frankel was in another race to his rivals for much of the way, with Queally chasing down the pacemaker far too soon, evidenced by the sectional times as well as the eyes, but where mere mortal thoroughbreds would have curled up, Frankel held on.

Jeremy Irons, who once played the dual role of twin gynaecologists in the film Dead Ringers, will need all and more of that acting prowess to recreate Sir Henry Cecil's dual expression of relief and distaste immediately after the finishing line at Royal Ascot 2011.

Challenge #3: Frankel v Canford Cliffs. The Sussex Stakes, billed as the 'Duel on the Downs', was the first time Frankel went up against an established top-notcher, the year-older Canford Cliffs having won five Group 1s at a mile. Frankel broke him.

Challenge #4: Frankel v the past masters. With Frankel continuing to steamroller everything (or Excelebration as everything is more commonly known), it became increasingly apparent that Frankel's most purposeful race was not against his contemporaries in the present but against the all-time greats from yesteryear; a race he won, according to Timeform, in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot in June. A defeat of Everything by eleven lengths earned Frankel a rating of 147, the highest ever in Timeform's history.

Challenge #5: Frankel v "official" ratings. Even for Frankel, this one is a challenge too far, supposedly. Click HERE to find out more.

Challenge #6: Frankel v 10.4 furlongs. Okay, so Frankel is by far and away the best miler right now and, by our reckoning, the best miler ever, but, in the International at York, was he up to the different challenge of a different trip and a different set of Group 1 horses in competition, on a different track to previously, while asked a different tactical question whereby his regular pacemaker was taken out of the equation?

Yes. And he did it the Frankel way. By seven lengths.

Challenge #7: Frankel v Cirrus des Aigles and testing ground. Why, then, is this, his final race, his biggest challenge yet, and what are the reasons he may be gunned down? Because it's a double-barrelled gun. In one barrel the ground, potentially the sort of ground that Frankel has never come across, and in the other barrel Cirrus des Aigles, who is in his absolute element on this very ground. Cirrus des Aigles does a fair impression of Frankel when he gets his conditions, and the last four times he's run on going softer than good he has won each race by at least eight lengths.

Cirrus des Aigles, the defending Champion (Stakes) don't forget, is almost guaranteed to run to his Timeform rating of 133, at the least, while it's implausible to expect Frankel to reproduce his monster 147 under alien circumstances to him. And there, in between 133 and 147, lies a battleground of approximately seven lengths, which sounds an uneven amount, but the ground is a great leveller, and it's levelled many greats in the past.

This is where the doom-mongering stops, however, as Frankel has one big thing going for him: he's Frankel. He's the one who has boldly gone where no horse has gone before, breaking new ratings ground in terms of both standard and frequency through 13 races unbeaten, rising to every challenge, and just as he's the most privileged thoroughbred ever born for the qualities he possesses, we are equally privileged to be around in his time.

So, Columbia TriStar, you can discard my Frankel screenplay the same way you discarded Pulp Fiction, as I'm happiest with a much shorter film, one roughly 23.36 minutes long: back-to-back replays of Frankel's 14 - yes, 14 - perfect wins.

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