Minnie Hauk become's Frankel's third Oaks winner

From the start, Ballydoyle's number one Minnie Hauk followed stablemate Whirl around and from over two out it was that pair who dominated, coming home in isolation to complete another successful assault on the Gr.1 Oaks at Epsom. 

Taken from the Thoroughbred Daily News, 7th June 2025, by Tom Frary:

Frankel's Minnie Hauk, who was a headline act from the first sight of her in public at the 2023 Goffs Orby Book 1 Sale, was just getting started when winning the Listed Cheshire Oaks last month and there was more than a degree of comfort in this follow-up despite the winning margin being only a neck. Able to saunter behind the strong tempo set by Whirl, the 9-2 second favourite was set alight by Ryan Moore heading to the three-furlong pole with Whirl's rider Wayne Lordan still holding something back.

It was between the three and the two that the Oaks was won, however, with Minnie Hauk engaging that acceleration derived from her Juddmonte dynasty of Kingman and co. to record a race-settling split of :11.41. While Whirl was faster in the final furlong, it may have been the winner idling or paying for her earlier surge or a mixture of both. Godolphin's 1000 Guineas-winning 11-10 favourite Desert Flower was tiring at the death four lengths away.

"The filly in front is good and kept building the whole way, but my filly got there easily and then waited with me," Moore said. "I think she'll improve for the experience and she won't need to go beyond a mile and a half - she'll be an Irish Oaks/Nassau type of filly and we'll go from there. She should continue to thrive."

Introduced over a mile at Cork at the beginning of October, Minnie Hauk shaped as many of the stable's newcomers do when in need of that initial education two and a half lengths adrift of Wemightakedlongway. Sharper for her second day at school later that month, she went one better at Leopardstown and continued her incremental progression on her return in the Cheshire Oaks with one of those workmanlike performances that suggest so much more.

Aidan O'Brien had talked recently about the improvement made by Lake Victoria from her first start of the season and Minnie Hauk is clearly another who has engineered a quantum leap since her relaunch. After she had become the first of the trainer's nine Cheshire Oaks winners to follow up in this, the master of Ballydoyle offered an insight into her rate of progression.

"She barely made Chester and she made abnormal improvement from there, which we thought she might," he explained. "That win was all about class rather than stamina or fitness, she just has a lot of class."

"I'd say she's still a bit green and she was always going to improve with racing. She's a great traveler with a lot of class - Ryan said he was going very easy early on - so she can take on the boys if the lads decide. There's every possibility she will be an Arc filly. She's a big middle-distance filly who was working like a Guineas filly. When that happens it's a little bit different. The Irish Oaks is always close to our hearts and then there's the Yorkshire Oaks and the French trials before the Arc."