THE four-year-old colt ended his flawless racing days with a 14th victory in the Qipco Champions Day at Ascot last Saturday and will wind down at Sir Henry Cecil’s stables until he is ready to make the short journey to his new home.

“Prince Khalid hasn’t really sat down and done the matings yet with Philip Mitchell (Juddmonte Farms general manager),” said the owner’s racing manager Teddy Grimthorpe.

“What we can say is that our very best mares, if they think they might be suited to Frankel, will certainly go there.

“We have to liaise with Henry. Frankel will be let down now and the real point will be to get him to the stage when he’s relaxed and he’s going to get used to a different life.

“That will take a week or so, maybe longer, until everyone’s happy and then he’ll come over to Banstead.”

“We didn’t have many worries when he came into the straight and he was still travelling pretty well. Tom (Queally) held him together and I thought it was just a wonderful ride,” Grimthorpe reflected on what was an extraordinary day watched by a sell-out crowd at Ascot that included Her Majesty The Queen, plus millions of racing fans throughout the world.

“It was always going to be an interesting day, whatever the outcome,” he said.

“When I’d walked the course I was much happier with the way the things were going to go.

“Going into the race, we were very happy.

“The way that everyone has reacted to Frankel, and to Henry, has been one of the great sporting stories of the year — if not many years.

“It was brilliant and totally deserved.

“I think a wide-margin victory was never really going to be on the cards with that sort of going.

“Of course, everyone would have loved to have seen it.

Mitchell is excited at Frankel returning to his place of birth to take up his new role.

He said: “He’s just awesome, and we look forward to having him return to the place he was born.

“We’ll leave that (when he returns to Banstead) to Sir Henry. He will decide when he comes here.

“Sir Henry will probably give him a few days to let himself down, so it probably won’t be next week. It will probably be more likely the following week.

“Everyone seems to be talking about him being worth £100 million, but that might be somewhat exaggerated.

“Everyone seems to be talking about him being worth £100 million, but that might be somewhat exaggerated. He’s like a painting. How do you value a horse which has never been seen before?

“I’d like to say we recognised him as a complete star as a foal and a yearling, but it never quite works out like that.

“Good horses almost go under the radar — they are never ill and always seem easier to deal with than other horses. Frankel certainly fell under that category.”

Mitchell felt Frankel retaining his unbeaten record was more relief than anything else.

“It wasn’t a case of celebration time on Saturday night, I think it was more a case of huge relief,” he said.

“It was a strange feeling at Ascot before he ran and it would have been awful if he had been beaten.

“He had won all of his races relatively easy, but I think at Ascot you saw something different from him — you saw his battling qualities.

“It was the ultimate day. It simply doesn’t get any better.

“It’s obviously fantastic, but behind the story is a lot of sadness about Bobby (Frankel) and Sir Henry’s illness.

“If we can achieve half of what the horse has achieved and what Henry has achieved, then I think we’ll have done a very good job indeed.”

Assessing Frankel’s prospects and potential worth at stud, Irish bloodstock expert Joseph Burke said: “There will be a huge demand for nominations to Frankel, no matter what level his fee is set at, and while he could conceivably cover 140-plus mares, it will prove more prudent to limit his book to 110-120 mares in his first season at stud, so as to give him every chance of getting his mares in foal and a decent-sized first crop to run for him.

“There will be a huge air of anticipation from the bloodstock world in 2014 when his first foals appear at the sales and again in 2016 when his first crop representatives hit the track.”

“His fee will remain in the region of £90,000 each year until his first two-year-olds reach the track in 2016.

“He was not only a fantastic racehorse, but he is also a son of the most successful European stallion that we have seen since Sadler’s Wells, namely his Derby-winning son Galileo.

“Galileo sired the top six yearlings sold at Tattersalls elite sale earlier this month including the sales topper, 2.5 million guinea purchase Hydrogen. Galileo stands at Coolmore Stud where his fee is currently listed as private, but is believed to be in the region of 300,000 euro.

“There will be a huge air of anticipation from the bloodstock world in 2014 when his first foals appear at the sales and again in 2016 when his first crop representatives hit the track and there is no reason to believe he should not prove a success at stud.”