Enable shrugs off challenge from Magical in Yorkshire Oaks

Magical is a 4-year-old filly, Enable a 5-year-old mare, and in both the Breeders’ Cup Turf last fall and the Eclipse Stakes this summer, Magical had come within three-quarters of a length of Enable, who can properly be called the best horse in the world.

A year younger and still improving, Magical, you might think, actually had a chance to beat Enable this season. But the gap between the two is growing wider, not closer.

Imperious Enable on Thursday at York swatted away Magical’s homestretch challenge like the tail of a great beast flicking aside a nagging fly. Enable had led from the start of the 1 1/2-mile Yorkshire Oaks when Magical, pushed down to Enable’s left flank when Enable’s John Gosden-trained stablemate Lah Ti Dar closed off a path to her right, launched her attack. It didn’t go far. Frankie Dettori gave Enable a couple shoves with the reins, and Enable quickly showed the real gap between the two horses is more like a chasm. At the finish, the margin between them was 2 3/4 lengths as Enable continued, might we say, a magical waltz through her 5-year-old campaign.

That made two Yorkshire Oaks for Enable (who won the race as a 3-year-old), 13 wins from 14 starts, 12 straight victories, and a 10th Group or Grade 1 triumph. The plan hatched by Gosden and owner-breeder Khalid Abdullah late last year was to bring Enable back from a historical 4-year-old campaign to make even more history this year by becoming the first three-time winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Enable had a spring setback and didn’t debut until the Eclipse in early July but since then the plan has come along like clockwork.

Enable looked a slightly more svelte animal Thursday than she did even weeks ago and made this win look easy after knocking heads with Crystal Ocean most of the final quarter-mile in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes on July 27 at Ascot. Gosden wants Enable fresh come the Oct. 6 Arc but not too fresh, thus the decision to use this race as a bridge.

Enable, by Nathaniel out of Concentric, by Sadler’s Wells, last season became the first horse to win the Arc and the Breeders’ Cup Turf in the same year. She earned automatic fees-paid entry Wednesday into the BC Filly and Mare Turf through the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Win and You’re In program, but there is likely no trip to America in the cards this year. Just one more ship across the English Channel to Paris, where Enable, already a towering figure in racing history, will try to climb one more mountain.