Why does Baaeed head to Ascot for an underwhelming last hoorah?
Superstar racehorse Baaeed will make his final racecourse appearance on Champions Day at Ascot on Saturday. The entire racing world will be watching and willing him home.
But, ultimately, despite his success, many will still be lamenting what might have been.
Baaeed has done everything with such ruthless efficiency thus far that he has made the incredible look unremarkable.
Ten wins from ten races, including six Group Ones, has all looked rather boring. His biggest winning margin this season came by “only” 6.5 lengths (over Mishriff at York).
It hasn’t been spectacular. It hasn’t had to be.
The hope is that the popular Adayar will provide a sterner test this weekend.
THE COLOUR OF MONEY
It is a fact of life that money talks. It is an even bigger fact of flat racing. The breeding industry’s financial grip on the wider sport means that arguably the best racehorse ever seen in Britain will be retired to stud after just his 11th race.
Looked at in these terms alone, it has been a glittering but desperately, even pathetically, short career.
That’s not to say his owners, Shadwell, aren’t justified in standing him down from competition. At least financially.
With age very much on his side and (presumably) 11 wins under his belt he will stand as one of the world’s most expensive sires.
If, like Galileo, he lives to 23, he could rack up £3.5m per month in covering fees for the next 19 years. Four weeks of that career might match his entire earnings over two full, undefeated seasons.
Winning the biggest races is just not cost-effective.
PUNTERS DISSATISFIED
These understandable financial decisions have unfortunately left racegoers with many unanswered questions.
Having never raced as a two-year-old, Baaeed will retire with three less races under his belt than the mighty Frankel. This alone, many argue, is enough to crown Frankel the better horse.
While it clearly doesn’t settle the debate, it does weigh against Baaeed. So does the fact that he never contested a Classic.
NO ARC
Many also feel it was an opportunity missed not to run him in Europe’s richest race last weekend, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Baaeed has never raced over a mile-and-a-half but his jockey, Jim Crowley, said it would be comfortable.
Despite announcing they were considering the Arc, William Haggas, Baaeed’s trainer, conflictingly later claimed he “was never that keen.”
Not that keen? On the richest horse race around? Really?
More tellingly, Haggas declared Baaeed “didn’t need” to go for the Arc. His stock is high enough without it.
Tempting as the riches in victory may have been, the prospective damage of a loss is hard to quantify.
Europe’s elite flock to the Arc, where the ground can be softer than ideal and it often springs up a surprise winner. Last year Torquator Tasso won at 80/1.
With the chances of victory slimmer across the Channel, connections will not have wanted to entertain the risk of his value at stud diminishing, even slightly, due to a blemish on his record.
It would also have ruled him out of Ascot this weekend. That would have been awkward for Haggas because he is in the hot seat to be crowned champion trainer.
An Arc win wouldn’t count towards his appropriate tally because it doesn’t take place on British shores.
Ultimately, the interests of the people who own or train him have spoken louder than sporting merit at every turn in Baaeed’s career.
Or certainly, so it seems from the outside looking in.
They’re understandable decisions and none of them are the horse’s fault, but throw in a lack of real challenger and all attempts to anoint him the greatest ever become harder and harder to justify.
He will be missed and long after Saturday the debate around him will continue to rage on.
But as we say goodbye, it is hard not to feel underwhelmed.
He could have, should have, had more.
