Already a champion despite impossible expectations: how is Frankel faring after ten years on from his first winner?

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You can't improve upon perfection, as they say. Frankel retired to Juddmonte's Banstead Manor as the best racehorse of the documented, cross-checked age and was expected to continue a stallion line onwards from three forefathers – Galileo, Sadler's Wells and Northern Dancer – who have had the most profound effect on thoroughbred breeding since the Darley Arabian.

Frankel had model breeding, too, being out of a mare by the transformative Danehill, sibling to high achievers including another Group 1 winner in Noble Mission and his useful regular pacemaker Bullet Train. He had the looks, the backstory and reputation, the support of one of the world's leading owner-breeders and the interest of most of the others. There was even merchandise.

To have maintained the trajectory of his unbeaten racing career, Frankel would arguably have needed to produce the winner of every Classic and landed every British and Irish sire title since 2017. Not impossible, perhaps, but totally improbable.