Baaeed bows out: unbeaten record on the line in Champion Stakes farewell

William Haggas, whose exceptional, unbeaten colt Baaeed is due to make his final trip to the races for the Qipco Champion Stakes at Ascot on Saturday, spoke this week about the extent to which everyone around the horse is carrying on as if it will be just another day at the track.

“We’re all lucky to have had this horse while he’s been in training with us, and every single person has enjoyed the ride immensely,” Haggas said. “But we can’t go around getting tense and taut because he will then feel it. We’ve just got to be normal, work normally and treat him, as best we can, as another horse in the yard, so that he knows no different. That’s the idea.”

The extent to which Haggas’s “don’t mention Saturday” approach is for Baaeed’s benefit – and not also an emotional crutch for a yard which is about to lose its superstar – is anyone’s guess. But as any racing fan or punter who has followed Baaeed through his 10 races to date will affirm, very little about the four-year-old is in any way normal.

Baaeed is not quite a once-a-century talent to match the extraordinary Frankel, who completed his own unbeaten career in the Champion Stakes a decade ago. He did not race as a juvenile, while Frankel was a champion in each of his three seasons on the track. And he did not line up for a Classic, whereas Frankel obliterated his three-year-old peers in the 2,000 Guineas, the first of a series of freakish performances that elevated his rating to an all-time record. Haggas’s colt, in fact, may well not finish the 2022 as the top-rated racehorse on the planet, following the recent, explosive arrival of Flightline on American dirt.

But an unbeaten, multiple Group One winner, carrying that air of invincibility into final last race, is still a