She has conquered the Arc twice, scored a memorable success at the Breeders’ Cup and is undefeated in her last ten races but there is much more to wondermare Enable than her outstanding exploits on the track. Newmarket correspondent David Milnes sees her every week on the gallops and reveals ten things you may not known about the superstar.
1. Enable is the first horse in Newmarket since Frankel that other strings give way to out on the Heath. She often goes up Warren Hill on her own under her lad Imran Shahwani towards the front of the John Gosden team and earlier in the year was hand led onto the canter, a rarity at Headquarters.
2. When she’s relaxing, the daughter of Nathaniel enjoys nothing more than throwing a mouthful of straw up in the air and letting it land on top of her head which means more work for her lad Imran at evening stables.
3. Saturday’s return trip to Ascot for the King George will be the first time Enable has run at the same course twice in her four seasons in training. When she won her first Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 2017 it was staged at Chantilly and it returned to Longchamp a year later. She has won more races going right-handed (six times) but is hardly inconvenienced going left-handed (five wins).
4. Enable has stood in the same box since she arrived at Clarehaven Stables as a two-year-old in 2016 and is stabled just two doors down from her three-year-old half-sister Entitle. She enjoys the company of a gaggle of girlfriends on a daily basis well away from the colts at Gosden’s vast premises on the Bury Road.
5. Frankie Dettori, who has partnered Enable to ten of her 11 wins, has her hooked on Polo mints, something he started bringing in as a treat after she won the Oaks in 2017.
6. Enable and her sire Nathaniel both won the Group 1 Coral-Eclipse at Sandown after a long absence. Nathaniel had a 266-day break before beating Farhh in 2012 while his daughter was off the track for 245 days prior to defeating Magical this month.
7. Enable’s favourite grass gallop in Newmarket is the round gallop on the Limekilns, which is right-handed and has an uphill finish. The facility can be used for a mile to mile and a quarter work and has hosted previous greats including Frankel, Dubai Millennium and Golden Horn.
8. Frankie Dettori was on the right one on the only occasion that Enable was beaten at Newbury in April 2017. He picked stablemate and the similarly Khalid Abdullah-owned Shutter Speed, who was sent off favourite and duly obliged with Enable a staying-on third.
9. Enable has a two-year-old half-sister by Frankel named Portrush, who is a little backward and is still at Juddmonte’s Ferrans Stud in Ireland. She may well head into training next year. The dam Concentric produced a full brother to Enable earlier this year who could wind up in training with John Gosden by 2021.
10. Enable has received fan mail and postcards from almost every corner of the world over the past four years and is particularly popular in Japan. (fonte : RacingPost)
