Group 1 win agonisingly elusive for consistent sprinter

Bated Breath was the sort of horse most trainers would give their right arm for. “If I had one like him every year, I’d be more than happy,” says Roger Charlton, who trained the sprinter for four seasons from 2009, when the horse did not run as a two-year-old.

Bated Breath was highly thought of from the day he arrived at Beckhampton, although Charlton remembers him as an immature horse physically. Nevertheless, he was the sole entry Charlton made for that year’s Dewhurst Stakes. “Those were the sort of aspirations we had for him from the start,” he reflects.

Three years on and Bated Breath would close his career having won the Group 2 Temple Stakes by a neck from old adversary Sole Power. But that bare detail hides a series of near-misses in the highest grade. From the day he finished a fair fifth on unsuitably easy ground in the 2011 Golden Jubilee Stakes, he only stepped down from Group 1 company once: in the aforementioned Temple Stakes.