High emotion for Juddmonte as Frankel reaches 100 stakes winners

It was a case of calculators and calendars at the ready on Saturday but no mistaking one particular achievement as the valuable Emotion became her sire Frankel's 100th individual stakes winner in the British Stallion Studs EBF Chalice Stakes at Newmarket.

Statistical double-checking revealed that the reigning champion sire has equalled the record time in order to achieve the milestone with the breed-shaping Danehill, a Juddmonte product who went on to worldwide success under the Coolmore umbrella.

The pair both took exactly 2402 days to reach that number, clocking on from the first of January in the year that their debut crop would be eligible to race.

Danehill, who had extended his prospects by shuttling to the southern hemisphere, held the record alone when future stallion Commands claimed the Group 3 Missile Stakes in Australia on July 31, 1999. Frankel is superficially a day earlier from his maiden crop in 2016 but has had one extra leap year day during this time.

Frankel, who became the fastest to 50 northern hemisphere Group winners last year, picked up stakes winner number one with the first of what are now seven crops of racing age when Fair Eva took the Princess Margaret Stakes at Ascot.

There could be a few more through Emotion, a lightly-raced filly who took the mile and a half event by a length.

She had only made her debut in mid-April and found the Queen's Vase at Royal Ascot a little too much, too soon. Owned by Qatar Racing, Emotion was bred out of the 2012 Prix du Cadran winner Molly Malone, bought by David Redvers for €600,000 at Arqana five years later. Molly Malone has already produced Morgan Le Faye, who landed the Group 2 Prix Corrida in 2019.

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