ENABLE’S victory in the Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe firmly establishes her reputation as one of the best racemares of recent times. Her future career plans will be interesting,

Enable is from the first crop of Nathaniel, a Group 1 winning son of the multiple champion Galileo. Runner-up on both his starts at two, on one occasion to Frankel, Nathaniel won three of his five starts in his second season, the highlight being the Group 1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot.

Kept in training at four, he added a further Group 1 success, dropping back to 10 furlongs to capture the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown. Danedream, now resident alongside Nathaniel at Newsells Park, denied him a second win in the King George, while Snow Fairy beat him at Leopardstown in the Irish Champion Stakes. His only other start at four saw him finish third to Frankel in the Champion Stakes at Ascot.

It was reasonable to expect that Nathaniel’s stock would improve with age, just like their sire, and the prospect of the Juddmonte-bred Enable staying in training and attempting to add to her tally of five Group 1 wins is mouth-watering. She is one of four stakes winners for Nathaniel this year and, with a record of seven career wins in eight starts and earnings of €4.4 million, it is not surprising that she is easily his best runner to date.

She is joined in that quartet by Group 3 winner God Given and the listed winners Face The Facts and Natavia, while Enjoy Vijay was runner-up in the Group 1 German Derby. Three more of Nathaniel’s sons and daughters have been Group 2-placed, while he has a total of 11 stakes performers to date. Nathaniel commanded a fee of £20,000 in his first four seasons and this dropped marginally this year to £17,500. A restoration to the original at least, or maybe an increase, is on the cards for 2018.

On the female side Enable has an outstanding pedigree. Her Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer) dam Concentric was trained by Andre Fabre and unraced at two. Her victories at three included a listed race at Chantilly and she was runner-up in the Group 3 Prix de Flore.

Her first three runners are winners and each one has been better than their predecessor. Apart from Enable, the winners include the Group 2-placed Contribution and that daughter of Champs Elysees (Danehill) was another to improve as she got older.

Concentric is one of nine winners from the Shirley Heights (Mill Reef) mare Apogee and the best of the rest were her own-sister Dance Routine and her three-parts brother, the dual Group 3 winner Apsis (Barathea). Dance Routine won the Group 2 Prix de Royallieu and was runner-up in the Group 1 Prix de Diane, the French Oaks. She narrowly missed out on landing a Group 1 but that omission was corrected by her best son Flintshire (Dansili).

Flintshire won the Grand Prix de Paris, three Grade 1s in the USA and the Hong Kong Vase, while also finishing second in the Arc and the Breeders’ Cup Turf. His winning half-sister Deliberate (King’s Best) is dam of last weekend’s Grade 2 Baltimore/Washington International Turf Cup Stakes winner Projected (Showcasing) who landed the biggest prize of his career on the eve of Enable’s victory.

Apogee was a Group 3 winner in France, while her half-sister Daring Miss (Sadler’s Wells) went one better and landed the Group 2 Grand Prix de Chantilly, before finishing second in the Group 1 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud The latter race was actually won by the El Prado (Sadler’s Wells) colt Spanish Moon, and he is the best son of Apogee’s winning half-sister Shining Bright (Rainbow Quest).