'Failure was not really an option - and that certainly put an edge on it'

Fanfares will blare when Baaeed strives to sign off his career with an 11th successive victory in the Qipco Champion Stakes on Saturday. It will be a memorable occasion but it cannot match the extreme drama and raw emotion generated by Frankel’s valedictory triumph in the same race ten years ago.

That’s because the two horses’ careers followed very different trajectories. By May of his three-year-old season Frankel had won the Royal Lodge (by ten lengths), the Dewhurst and the 2,000 Guineas (by six lengths). Baaeed, by contrast, had yet to see a racecourse.

Frankel was the racing showman to Baaeed’s less flamboyant demeanour. And Frankel’s career unfolded in tandem with Sir Henry Cecil’s debilitating struggle against a cancer he knew had put him on borrowed time.