Calandagan is doing more than winning elite races. He is reshaping one of racing`s oldest debates. The brilliant gelding enhanced his reputation with a second successive Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud triumph and now stands poised to become the first gelding to contest the Prix de l`Arc de Triomphe under France`s new rules. His remarkable career has reignited questions over tradition, breeding, longevity and the very purpose of modern thoroughbred racing.

The one everyone`s calling ‘the best racehorse on the planet` did his best to justify that exalted pedestal in his latest race, the Grand Prix de Saint Cloud (Gr1). In one respect that title is unquestionable - there isn`t a gamer horse around. He had to come from way behind the field at the Val d`Or racecourse in the western suburbs of Paris, France, to win this prestigious twelve-furlong race for four-year-olds, for the second year running.

To crown his reputation he has to win his nation`s most precious race, the five million euros Prix de l`Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp in October. But he`ll have to wait until 2027, by which time he will be eligible, aged six, to prove, conclusively, on the racecourse he is supreme. He will not be able to do so when he retires; there will be no stud career. Calandagan is a gelding.

The French authorities have opened up the Arc next year to all-comers - three-year-olds and above, colts, fillies and thoroughbreds that have been castrated. If he stays sound and retains his form Calandagan (a place name in the Philippines) will be the first gelding to contest the race that, most years, is rated number one in the world. The French are very proud of that accolade. Calandagan has won the equivalent races to the Arc, in Tokyo, the Japan Cup, and at Ascot, the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes last year. In the latter, £2m event on July 25, he is set for a rematch with the Japanese Masquerade Ball, whom he beat narrowly in the Japan Cup. If Godolphin`s flagship Ombudsman turns up too then we have some race in prospect – and that`s without anticipating which of the Coolmore army is thrown into the fray.

If he is around in 2027 – and longevity is an attribute gelding conveys – Calandagan, at six, would be the second oldest winner of France`s great race, first run in 1920. Motrico won the Arc in 1930 and again two years later - as a seven-year-old. He had been a failure at stud after his first Arc victory, and was a failure again after his second success. Had he been a gelding nobody would have cared; he wouldn`t have been eligible to race. France-Galop has taken the leap to admit geldings.

And yet the argument about whether geldings should be allowed to race in Group One won`t go away. The argument goes that they have an advantage – primarily because they are easier to train - over entires and would win races that should be reserved for performers trying to establish whether not they were fit for stud. “Promotion of the breed” has been the clarion call for maintaining “purity”. The old shibboleth – racing promoted as, “It`s all about the future of the breed” is dead and gone. The thought of geldings beating the best colts was abhorrent in former times.

Top class winners of Calandagan`s age that have not been gelded are unlikely contestants because the rush is from distinction on the racetrack to the stud farm – as soon as possible to maximize income from the covering shed. In the old days, when the sport was dominated by aristocratic owner-breeders, they could afford to race their produce for as long (or short) careers as they wished. But since the market eclipsed all other considerations the onus has been on getting the best horses to stud as quickly as possible and make far more money in syndication and stud fees than prize money ever could reward. Thoroughbreds, you could say, have become ‘exploited` animals.

Winners, male and female, of the Arc, the Derby, Oaks and top sprints such as the July Cup, Nunthorpe, the Abbaye in France, are hustled off to stud ostensibly to “mate the best with the best and hope for the best”. Actually it is to make money.


Saying all of which Calandagan is the seventh winner of the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud for the late Aga Khan`s stud farms, Gilltown and Sallymount in Ireland, Bonneval in France. They race very few geldings: Calandagan is almost unique. He was gelded after his first, unsuccessful, run at Deauville in 2023. He is a big strong animal who has only been ridden by two jockeys in seventeen races – Marcel Barzalona and Stephane Pasquier who have both expressed their admiration while the latter wasn`t afraid to say “he can be a naughty boy”. Had he remained an entire the likelihood is that Calandagan would have been “a handful”.

The bloodstock market, at the over-heated top end, shows no sign of cooling: below the cream though, foal production everywhere is in decline.

Racing is approaching a watershed moment – and without getting enmeshed in details (as aggravating as the interminable debate over geldings), politicians everywhere are not well disposed towards the sport. At best they see it as a well from which to pump taxation.

Hammering racing and gambling wins votes – many more than it loses as the racing work force lose their jobs.

The future looks brighter for Calandagan of course. Had he been an entire his prospects at stud would have been debated; there is strength in depth on the dam`s side but he is by far and away the best progeny of his sire Gleneagles whose ‘next best` offspring Mill Stream won the six-furlong sprint championship, the July Cup (Gr1) at Newmarket. Mill Stream himself stands at a minor fee of 6000 euros. His first foals hit the ground this year.

The battle to include geldings in the Prix de l`Arc de Triomphe has been won; but not yet the war. The day is unlikely to dawn in the near future when the Classics will be opened to geldings. Weight of opinion has gradually moved towards allowing horses to take one another on at the highest level giving a better indication of the merit of thoroughbreds from different crops, and making for more entertainment (not forgetting betting turnover). These are acknowledged to be the chief reasons behind the idea of racing horses against each other – or were until the ‘market` took over. The debate goes round and round.

Calandagan may be able to make an impact in next year`s Arc. Personally I feel that people have been running scared of him because of his record which apart from the Coronation Cup (Gr1) at Epsom, in which he has been defeated in consecutive years, has been impeccable. He had six Group 1 victories in a row going into this year`s Coronation Cup and defeat must be laid at the door of the unseasonable (dare one say false?) Epsom going – rain and over-watering - which saw odd results at the meeting. The Derby and Oaks winners have since been beaten as have the second and third from the Coronation Cup. The surprise winner, Bay City Roller, has yet to reappear.

Calandagan`s career earnings are just over £9m. He has never beaten his conquests by much – never more than a fraction over three lengths, and his contemporaries would not live with champions of the past. For example, perhaps his finest hour was winning last year`s Japan Cup, six thousand miles away from his back yard in Chantilly. That narrow victory was as heroic as his return to home ground at Saint-Cloud where all-out victory was registered in an almost identical rating figure, in bunched finishes, to that he achieved in Japan. That figure is 7lb and more below Arc champions such as Sea the Stars (2009), Treve (2013-14), Peintre Celebre (1997), Dancing Brave (1986), and going back even further, not in the same league as such as Mill Reef, Sea Bird and the mighty Ribot (1955-6).

2027 is far too far ahead to imagine what opposition Calandagan may face. Last year the great race went to the Aga Khan Stud`s homebred Daryz (by Sea the Stars) who may well be the representative of the green and red eminences again. By 2027 one would expect Daryz to be at work, at stud. This April in Hong Kong, the Queen Elizabeth II Cup, Masquerade Ball finished just in front of the Frenchman Sosie who has been well beaten by Daryz.

Calandagan has been a major weapon in gaining entry for geldings. Bedtime, second in the Japan Cup and Teleprompter conquered America in the mid-1980s. They stood out because they were head and shoulders over the majority of their contemporaries in the UK – and yet weren`t allowed to run against them. Teleprompter also wore blinkers: not banned in the classics.

We all crave a pristine champion like Frankel but they don`t come along very often. He has achieved at stud what was anticipated from his unbeaten racing career. Oh what a kerfuffle there`d have been had the French gelding Cirrus des Aigles beaten him in his last run, the 2012 Champion Stakes (Gr 1) at Ascot. Cirrus des Aigles went on to run another twenty-two times, racing until the age of nine – in the process helping cement Frankel`s reputation with four Group One victories. Cirrus des Aigles was an impeccable yardstick on the merits of successive generations. He beat dual Arc winner Treve two years (2014) after Frankel beat him in that Ascot race.

In the States and Australasia geldings are not discriminated against in the best races with the result that such as Kelso, Fort Marcy, Forego and John Henry entered the American Racing Hall of Fame alongside great stallions as famous as Secretariat and Man O` War. All Australian racehorses are judged against the great gelding Phar Lap who also went to America to establish his immortality. And on his home Australian shores another gelding, Kingston Town, would be mentioned in the same breath.

Damascus, Never Bend, Northern Dancer and Seattle Slew to name but four were all top-class runners beaten by geldings in top races, defeats which in no way compromised their popularity at stud where they achieved lasting fame.

The oldest thoroughbred, a gelding of course and long since retired, reached the age of 42. The oldest winner, in Britain at least, was another gelding Megalala who won for the twentieth time aged 15. That was on the flat; the barely credible Sonny Somers was first past the post aged 18 in a steeplechase.

There is no answer to the debate that will satisfy everybody, purists, romantics and pragmatists alike. Meanwhile racing cannot afford to be side-tracked. A ‘side-track` was a railroad expression – a diversion off the main line: if they hadn`t been invented even more crashes would have been the consequence. At a juncture when racing is in danger of hitting the buffers through far more pressing problems than the future of gelding participation, notably the political pressure to increase taxes and intrusion into punters` daily life by the UK Government-led “betting affordability checks”, the gelding issue should be given a rest.