Catch Me If You Can

In a follow-up to Monday's column, where John Boyce looked at the average Timeform ratings of the top 10 performers by second-season sires, here he shows how the runaway leader of that list, Frankel, compares to all sires at the end of their second season over the last 25 years.

Frankel's first 2-year-olds included the best 10 by average Timeform rating of any sire in the past 25 years in Europe. So far, his year-two number puts him in seventh place among all stallions in the same period. The sire he needs to catch to maintain number one spot is the great Montjeu, who had reached 118.2 by the end of his second season. Frankel's task therefore is to make up almost three pounds per top-10 horse. And he has the rest of the summer and autumn to achieve it.