Colin Keane's decision to partner Siskin in the Sussex Stakes on Wednesday at Goodwood really wasn’t much of a decision at all, despite it being framed as such in certain quarters.
Two weeks of quarantine on his return across the Irish Sea will greatly hinder his chances of becoming champion jockey, but having achieved that laudable feat in 2017, Keane has rightly opted to focus on bigger and better things.
The race to be champion trainer or champion jockey never occupies the minds of fans of the sport until governing bodies, sponsors and the media attempt to weave it into the narrative as the curtain draws on the season.
The shoehorned idea that becoming champion jockey or trainer is similar to landing a league title in another sport doesn’t really translate to racing, which is more about peaking for a series of cup finals or majors.
Here's how Siskin won a terrific Irish 2,000 Guineas at the Curragh #RTEracing pic.twitter.com/KBBM2NDk09
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) June 12, 2020
Siskin’s bid to extend his unbeaten record to six races and claim a third consecutive Group One after his Irish 2,000 Guineas success marks a major step forward, not just for Keane, but also for his boss Ger Lyons, in what is shaping up to be an annus mirabilis for the duo after they also struck with Even So in the Irish Oaks.
Siskin assured his future as a stallion with his performances as a juvenile, but victory at Goodwood would mark another staging post successfully reached in the ascent to the type of stardom that assures a lasting legacy in the public consciousness.
Keane is almost certain to be in the plate every step of the way on a journey that could require plenty of international travel, pandemic or no. It’s still early days, but there are a number of famous horse and jockey partnerships he will be dreaming of joining in the pantheon of racing greats.
Enable & Frankie Dettori (2017-?)
If lists highlighting the greatest ever in any discipline have one major weakness, it’s their tendency towards recency bias.
However, horse and jockey merited their inclusion long before making history with a third triumph in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot on Saturday.
It’s overly simplistic to regard Dettori’s career as a three-act play which chronicles a rise and fall and rise as the end draws near, but Enable and trainer John Gosden have allowed him to remain at a heady peak in recent seasons after a period of tumult and oscillating fortunes.
Like plenty of fillies and mares he's ridden, Dettori is known to like the sun on his back, which is one of the reasons Rab Havlin did the steering when Enable made her racecourse debut in November 2016 at Newcastle.
The striking visual performance and impressive closing sectional times that day marked her out as one to watch for the Classic season that would follow.
William Buick was on board when the filly was beaten as stable second string on her seasonal reappearance at Newbury, with Dettori making the right call in partnering Shutter Speed, but Enable would never again be without the assistance of the Italian in the saddle.
Her 13 wins in her 15 subsequent starts have included victories in the English and Irish Oaks, a Breeders’ Cup Turf and two Prix de l’Arc de Triomphes.
All roads now lead to Longchamp on the first Sunday in October as she bids for a third win in the race that only Waldgeist thwarted last season.
Win or lose, she’ll likely head off to the paddocks for good at the end of the season. But there aren’t the same commercial concerns to consider when thinking about a potential broodmare in comparison to a potential stallion. It’s slightly morose, but owner Khalid Abdullah is already in his ninth decade. How many of her progeny is he ever likely to see on the racecourse? He may be left asking himself the question 'What’s another year?’
Sea The Stars & Mick Kinane (2008-2009)
A jockey's autumn years can give way to a winter of discontent pretty quickly.
When Kinane departed Ballydoyle in late 2003 and struck up an alliance with John Oxx, it had a whiff of the high-flying exec stepping out of the fast lane and taking a slightly less-pressurised role ahead of retirement.
Oxx was still operating near the peak of his powers and there were big races to be won with the yard with the likes of Azamour and Alandi, but the chances of unearthing one last superstar for Kinane to boot home were growing increasingly unlikely.
A battling Beresford win at the end of his juvenile campaign marked Sea The Stars as a horse of some potential, one that would lure Kinane in for one final season in the saddle having partnered him in all three of his two-year-old starts, but not even those closest to the son of Galileo could have dreamed of the scope of his achievements in 2009.
A six-race unbeaten Classic campaign culminated in Arc glory at Longchamp after earlier in the season becoming the first horse to complete the 2000 Guineas-Derby double since Nashwan 20 years earlier.
Sea The Stars' Arc win wasn’t remarkable for the horses he beat, but for the manner of his victory. Horses that pull as hard as he did aren’t meant to score in Group One company. But’s it’s a trait plenty of the greats have shared. They can’t settle because they are travelling too slowly for their level of ability. Even in races at the top tier, they have a class edge. The other characteristic he possessed along with a couple of others on this list was a huge, raking stride which allowed him to devour ground in effortless fashion.
Frankel & Tom Queally (2010-2012)
If Mick Kinane is right in his assertion that Sea The Stars never fully received the level of acclaim he deserved, despite being celebrated, it's almost certainly because Frankel came along so soon afterwards.
Frankel and Queally enjoyed a perfect 14-race unbeaten streak over three seasons, with the horse and jockey alliance overshadowed by the relationship between horse and handler.
Henry Cecil's renaissance couldn’t have happened without Frankel, and his return to the top in British racing while ill-health loomed large in the background is one of the most compelling stories in the sport’s abundant back catalogue, one that will eventually be told in film format with Jeremy Irons, star of 1988’s Dead Ringers, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the rakish Cecil.
Queally’s role in the non-celluloid version of events is a complex one.
Unlike the other jockeys on the list, he won’t be remembered as an all-time great. An inept tactical ride in the 2011 St James’s Palace Stakes nearly got possibly the greatest horse of all-time beaten. By Zoffany. That takes some doing.
But owners and trainers aren’t known for their sentiment where riding arrangements are concerned with regards to superstars and future stallions.
Frankel was a tearaway in his early days, one that could have gone the wrong way without the most delicate of handling. Regular work rider Shane Fetherstonhaugh, Cecil and Queally all played roles in harnessing and realising that talent.
Frankel and Queally have seen their careers go in very different directions since that final win together in the Champions Stakes at Ascot in 2012.
Queally would have realised that he’d never again throw his leg over one so great, but that comment would likely apply to every rider to have ever walked into a weighing room.
Zenyatta & Mike Smith (2008-2010)
Named after an album by The Police, who were in the stable of A&M Records co-founder and racehorse owner Jerry Moss, Zenyatta didn't reach the track until the end of her three-year-old season.
That’s a relatively unusual occurrence in a jurisdiction where precocity is so valued. But her physique told you why. Zenyatta was a huge mare and her frame took time to fill.
When she did reach the racecourse, she made a winning debut at Hollywood Park and won twice more before Smith took over the reins for the remainder of her career.
Heading into the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic with a perfect 19-0 record, the defending champion had captivated the American public like no horse since Secretariat decades earlier.
Beating the boys, her nerve-racking come-from-behind style, her Guinness guzzling, the prancing and dancing, and her relationship with Smith and trainer John Shirreffs all endeared her to a nation where racing had been a de facto minority sport for a very long time.
She became a regular fixture in the non-racing media and was the subject of a 60 Minutes programme, which further enhanced her box-office draw.
When Zenyatta broke from the gates under the lights at Churchill Downs on her final outing and made an even slower start than was customary, it looked as though she could have pulled up, she was so far back.
But a remarkable stretch run and a perfect send-off was only denied by the gutsy Blame as the two horses hit the line in unison. The winning margin was just a head, the finish one of the greatest in the history of the meeting, and the post-race press conference with an inconsolable Smith was the most memorable.
If Zenyatta's legacy is her popularity, it’s one that the racing industry in the US has squandered.
When criticism was levelled at her, it was often that she had done much of her winning on synthetic, rather than traditional US dirt surfaces. The move from dirt to synthetics enraged a significant and powerful cohort of US horsemen. The new surfaces being installed at the time rode more like turf than dirt. Dirt stallions couldn’t be relied upon to produce winners at a strike-rate that could have been expected or tolerated in US racing’s brave new world. The traditionalists eventually got their way, with most tracks reverting to the less horse-friendly surface.
Welfare issues may not have been of paramount importance to those inside the industry, but the public’s concerns over the role of medication and racing surfaces have brought the Stateside sport a torrent of negative headlines following a rise in equine deaths, negating all the work Zenyatta did to win over a skeptical public.
Goldikova & Olivier Peslier (2007-2011)
Peslier partnered Goldikova in all 27 of her career outings over half a decade, which is a remarkable stat in itself.
Trainer Freddy Head had set a record for Group One wins for a European-trained horse on Miesque during his time in the saddle and it was apt that he would go on to shatter it with a filly in his charge once he joined the training ranks.
Goldikova won 17 of her lifetimes starts, with 14 of them Group One successes, nine of which came against the boys.
She’d boast an even more impressive win ratio but for her strong preference for fast ground - something that could rarely be anticipated as a given in her native France.
Her push-button acceleration and love of a sound surface meant she was always likely to be ideally suited to US turf racing and she’ll be best remembered for her transatlantic trips and a hat-trick of Breeders’ Cup Mile titles between 2008 and 2010.
The mighty Winx and Hugh Bowman might make for a notable omission from our list, but she’d already been partnered by five riders before Bowman became a permanent fixture on the Australian wondermare, while Christophe Soumillon and Zarkava enjoyed a brilliant unbeaten association, alas one that was on the brief side.
