Turf empress Enable retired

In the end, Enable wasn’t able to become the first three-time winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, but that is no reason not to celebrate the end of the mare’s brilliant racing career.

Enable officially was retired from racing Monday, eight days after she finished sixth while starting in her fourth Arc.

Her trainer, John Gosden, and racing manager Teddy Grimthorpe left open the chance Enable could yet race again, with a start in the Breeders’ Cup or this Saturday on the QIPCO Champions card at Ascot floated by speculators outside the mare’s inner circle. But all Gosden and Grimthorpe really had said was the Enable exited the Arc in good physical condition and her owner and breeder, Khalid Abdullah, who races in America as Juddmonte Farms, liked to take a week to make decisions of such import.

Monday, word came Enable was done.

Six-year-old Enable was retired with a record of 15-2-1 from 19 starts, her lone finish worse than third coming last Sunday, when she struggled home sixth on heavy ground she couldn’t handle and with trouble a quarter-mile from the Arc’s end. Her third-place finish came in her second career start, her 3-year-old debut, and a dozen wins in a row followed that loss, a string of stirring successes that made Enable the most famous racehorse in the world. The two secondplace finishes: Her first start of 2020, when she was beaten by the mighty Ghaiyyath in the Eclipse Stakes, and in the 2019 Arc, an excruciating defeat to Waldgeist after Enable surged to the lead in upper stretch, and was run down yards before a history-making triumph.

The rest of her races resulted in resounding reverence. Gosden gave Enable a soft opening, not even trying her in group-stakes competition until her fourth start, which came in the Epsom Oaks. Enable won the Oaksby five lengths, a suggestion of true superstardom convincingly validated the rest of 2017. Enable went on to win the Irish Oaks, the King George, the Yorkshire Oaks, and her first Arc by more than two lengths. Frankie Dettori had started riding her the race before the Oaks. The jockey and horse would become inextricably linked.

Her 4-year-old campaign in 2018 got delayed because of injury, and following a September prep race, her first start since the 2017 Arc, she desperately held off 3-year-old filly Sea of Class to become the seventh two-time Arc winner. Twentyseven days later at Churchill Downs, Enable became the first horse to win the Arc and the Breeders’ Cup Turf the same season when she turned back Magical by three-quarters of a length.

Enable wound up with 11 Group 1 wins over a variety of course conditions, her sweet spot coming anywhere between 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 miles. By Nathaniel out of Concentric, by Sadler’s Wells, she is off to visit the stallion Kingman this breeding season. A child of “The Queen,” as Enable was called, will be on the way in 2022.