Can horses be put into class 1 arbitrarily or what?

Are you being serious?

Class 1 is supposed to be for the best horses, not ones that happened to win a C4 debut by a head.

Yes but in the early stages of a horse's career, its ability is very much in the eyes of connections, with an eye on morning gallops, pedigree and price tag. Frankellina had the campaign you'd expect of an Oaks filly: win an end-of-term maiden at two, then next season straight into pattern company in the Musidora, which is an Oaks trial, where she dead-heated for second just a short-head behind the winner, and then onto the Oaks itself and Royal Ascot.

She'd have won more races with a Sir Mark Prescott campaign. Maiden then working her way up from low grade handicaps to high grade handicaps and ending up in the same Listed races.

Why now? All this was 4 or 5 years ago.

I was checking out how Frankel's progeny was doing. It's no longer a holy grail it seems.

Still, if a horse is not good enough for C1, it could still win easier races. I guess the owner was only insterested in winning C1s.

Do you understand the program book, the pattern and the modus operandi for a well bred filly?

For fillies, her value for breeding goes up if she wins or is placed in a pattern race. This is called "black type" because in a sales catalogue, they are shown in bold (ie black) type.


Here is the catalogue page for Mighty Ulysses who won today, when he was sold as a yearling. You can see the typographic conventions used.
https://www.tattersalls.com/cat/october/2020/498.pdf

Thanks Ramruma, an actual useful poster is rare around here.