Frankel is the barometer by which all Flat horses of repute are measured - the true great champion of the 21st century and a dual Royal Ascot winner to boot.
Frankel won five times at Ascot for the late, great Sir Henry Cecil in his career and perhaps the most sparkling of those wins came in 2012 when he bludgeoned the field in the Queen Anne Stakes.
Royal Ascot 2024 is looming large on the horizon and we are taking a look back at some famous contests that have unfolded on the famous stretch of Berkshire turf.
Watch every race from Royal Ascot 2024 via the bet365 live Sports Streaming Service as the pinnacle meeting of the Flat season and a true British sporting institution takes place from Tuesday 18th June – Saturday 22nd June.
Already the king before Ascot romp
By June 2012, the mighty Frankel was into this third and final season as a racehorse and he was busy re-writing the history books.
Four wins as a juvenile ended with a dominant Dewhurst win at Newmarket in 2010, his maiden Group 1 success.
He then went four-from-four in 2011, famously scorching to 2000 Guineas glory at Newmarket as commentator Ian Bartlett declared in awe: "At the bushes, Frankel is 15-lengths clear" with a sense of bemusement and wonder.
After that his first Royal Ascot run produced the slenderest winning margin of his career in the St James's Palace Stakes as Ryan Moore and Zoffany made Tom Queally pull out all the stops to win.
That same summer, the Sussex Stakes at Glorious Goodwood was famously billed as the 'Duel on the Downs' before Frankel left Canford Cliffs trailing in his wake.
Queen Anne demolition a race to remember
On his 2012 debut it was another smooth display at Newbury in the Lockinge, with Aidan O'Brien's Excelebration some five lengths adrift in second.
They clashed again at Royal Ascot in the Queen Anne come June and, this time, Frankel produced perhaps the standout performance of his 14-race career.
Admittedly, he was the 1/10 favourite for the first race of the meeting but, even allowing for that, it was a seismic display.
Excelebration and Joseph O'Brien sat alongside in the first half of the race but Frankel put them to the test from just beyond halfway and soon had the race won.
With two furlongs to run, Queally gave the great horse the signal to go and he rocketed away from some good horses, settling the race in strides but galloping relentlessly to the winning post for an 11-length romp in a Group 1 race where he faced as many as ten rivals for the only time in his career.
It was spellbinding stuff and underlined once more that Frankel was in a class all of his own.
He rubberstamped his legacy by adding a second Sussex Stakes at Goodwood and then stepped up in trip to win the Juddmonte International at York.
Finally he triumphed in the Qipco Champion Stakes back at Ascot on his final start – defying worries that the soft ground might be his undoing over the longer trip as he repelled French ace and soft-ground lover Cirrus Des Aigles to end his stunning career in style.
Frankel the final star for Cecil
Sir Henry Cecil died aged 70 in the summer of 2013. He had courageously battled stomach cancer and those closest to the legendary trainer truly believed that Frankel's racing career had helped preserve Cecil in that fight.
A 10-time champion Flat trainer, he was responsible for 25 British Classic winners and was also the leading handler at Royal Ascot with a record 75 successes.
Cecil, who was knighted in 2011, enjoyed the final years of his career in plotting the path of Frankel, officially the highest-ever rated racehorse after finishing his career unbeaten in 14 starts.
Cecil's career had nose-dived in the early 2000s, going four years without a Group 1 winner at one stage, but success in the 2007 Oaks with Light Shift brought him back to the big-time.
Frankel was the horse of a lifetime, both for race fans and Cecil himself, and the wonder-horse gave him another reason to live.
