How upstart Flightline elbowed his way in among the true greats

Not many people outside America will have heard that a nag called Flightline is on the brink of becoming the best horse to have raced since international rankings began.

Flightline who?

What about Frankel and Enable in Europe? Black Caviar and Winx in Australia? And American Pharoah and Zenyatta in the good old US of A itself?

Breeders’ Cup Classic

Well, if Flightline wins the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland in Kentucky on Saturday he will attain a ranking above all those champions.

The four-year-old colt already has a 139-pound ranking on the Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings – which aims to provide an unbiased assessment of global equine talent. Frankel retired on an all-time high mark of 140 and is widely rated the best thoroughbred of modern times.

British and other pundits will, rightly, point out that Frankel’s unbeaten 14-race career – with a number of victories at the top level – is far superior to Flightline’s five-race unbeaten run, thus far, and a narrow one-pound difference in rankings is absurd.

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Nonetheless, a quick check with Timeform, for decades the gold standard of rankings, sees Flightline at 143 and Frankel at 147. The only horses separating them are Sea-Bird (145), Brigadier Gerard and Tudor Minstrel (both 144) – horses that raced in the mid-20^th century.

The top four all raced on turf, and primarily in Europe, whereas Flightline is a dirt specialist and American-trained. Before him, US runners were headed by the great Cigar (138).

Son of Tapit

How did five races catapult a horse so rapidly up the logs?

For one thing, Flightline won those five races by a combined 62.75 lengths to the runners-up. This demands a closer look.

The son of champion sire Tapit was bought by a partnership for $1-million as a yearling. He showed much potential in early work in the California yard of trainer John Sadler, but an injury robbed him of a tilt at his generation’s Triple Crown.

His first outing was in late-April 2021, when he started favourite and beat six rivals by 13 lengths. Another 13-length cruise in a minor event followed, prompting connections to elevate him straight into Grade 1 company in the Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita. That 11.5-length humbling for the opposition was followed by a mere six-length win in another Grade 1, at Belmont in New York and his first venture out of California.

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If there remained any doubts Flightline was something special, they were squashed at the Pacific Classic at Del Mar in September 2022. His jockey, Flavien Prat, was easing up over the final furlong but he still beat Country Grammar – winner of the 2022 Dubai World Cup – by 19.25 lengths.

Such extraordinary winning margins will inevitably evoke memories of Secretariat’s 31-length demolition job in the 1973 Belmont Stakes – not to mention callow speculation that this young upstart might be the equal of “Big Red”. Arguments about the relative merits of horses from different eras might be great fun but they can never be conclusive.

The first step in putting Flightline’s case will be victory on Saturday, when he will face his strongest opposition yet. Ante-post odds suggest his main threats will come from Epicenter, a recent Tavers Stakes winner, and Life Is Good, who won a major dirt race at last year’s Breeders’ Cup meeting.