Frankel and Enable owner Prince Khalid Abdullah dies at 83

Prince Khalid Abdullah, one of flat racing's most successful owners and breeders, whose horses included Frankel and Enable, has died aged 83, it was announced Tuesday.

The Saudi royal's distinctive green, pink and white colours were carried to victory in 118 Group or Grade One races. Many of those winners came from his successful Juddmonte breeding operation, with bases near the heartlands of English and American racing in Newmarket and Kentucky respectively.

Juddmonte chief executive Douglas Erskine Crum, chief executive of his Juddmonte breeding operation, paid tribute by telling the BBC: "Prince Khalid will always be remembered as a quiet, dignified, benevolent family man, whose horses spoke for him," he said. "He leaves a legacy that will stand the test of time."

Enable, twice the winner of France's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, the pinnacle of European flat racing, was the latest in a long line of leading horses owned by Prince Khalid. Frankie Dettori, Enable's jockey, lauded Prince Khalid as an "amazing man, with an amazing breeding operation".

"It's very sad news," Dettori told the Racing Post.  "I've enjoyed some great success for Prince Khalid over the years...One of my earliest big wins was aboard Ryafan in the Prix Marcel Boussac at Longchamp. I know he got great satisfaction from Enable and I think one of the last times he went racing was when she won the Arc for the second time in 2018.

"He was colossal in every sense of the word for our industry, with stallions, mares and breeding operations that produced a host of top-class horses over nearly 50 years."

Other equine nobility to carry the prince's famous silks included Dancing Brave, Zafonic and Commander in Chief. But arguably his most celebrated champion was Frankel.

Under the guidance of the late Henry Cecil, one of English racing's most successful trainers, the unbeaten Frankel was sent out from Newmarket to win 14 consecutive races before being retired to stud in 2012.

There were 10 Group One victories in that list, including a stunning triumph in the 2011 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket and an 11-length victory in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Cecil's widow, Jane, said: "Prince Khalid was a gentleman and was so loyal to Henry.  "Sending him Frankel for him to train in the last few years of his life really helped him carry on. He was a good friend to Henry and without his support at one stage of his career he wouldn't have been able to continue, but he believed in him."

It was a point underlined by Tom Queally, Frankel's jockey. "The prince was a gentleman and his loyal patronage of my old boss Sir Henry Cecil through thick and thin couldn't have had a better outcome in the end with a horse like Frankel coming along," Queally said.

Enable's trainer was one of Cecil's Newmarket neighbours, John Gosden, who told Britain's PA news agency how Prince Khalid first enjoyed going racing in the 1950s as a young man in Paris. 

"This sparked his bold and thorough plan to establish a breeding operation in the late 1970s, an illustration of his brilliant mind," Gosden noted.

The trainer added: "He was a very private and patrician gentleman and a very strong family man, for whom it has been a great honour and privilege to train for 38 years.”