With a Timeform Annual Rating of ‘just’ 144, Brigadier Gerard rates equal-third, alongside Tudor Minstrel, and behind just Frankel and Sea-Bird, in the all-time list of horses assessed by the renowned ratings organisation.
Bred and owned by Mr. and Mrs. John Hislop, trained by Major W.R. ‘Dick’ Hern and ridden, exclusively, by Joe Mercer, Brigadier Gerard raced eighteen times between June, 1970 and October, 1972 and tasted defeat just once. The ‘Big Fella’, as Mercer affectionately called him, was unbeaten in four starts a juvenile, including the Middle Park Stakes at Newmarket, but in the Free Handicap was rated 2lb inferior to My Swallow and 1lb inferior to Mill Reef.
He lined up with both those horses, and three other rivals, in a small, but select, field for the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket on the first start of his three-year-old campaign. When asked for maximum effort running into ‘the Dip’, he responded well, quickening smartly away to win, easily, by 3 lengths from Mill Reef, with My Swallow a further three-quarters of a length away in third.
Brigadier Gerard was kept to a mile for most of his three-year-old season, winning the St. James’s Palace Stakes, Sussex Stakes, Goodwood Mile and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes by an aggregate of 28 lengths. On his final start of 1971, though, he was stepped up to a mile-and-a-quarter for the first time in the Champion Stakes. On heavy going, he went perilously close to losing his unbeaten record and was all out to hold soft-ground specialist Rarity by a short head. Nevertheless, hold on he did, to take his unbeaten run to ten, and was subsequently named Horse of the Year.
Further success at the highest level followed in 1972, with victories in the Lockinge Stakes, the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the Eclipse Stakes and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, on his first attempt at a mile-and-a-half. Brigadier Gerard finally met his ‘Waterloo’ in the Benson and Hedges Cup – now the Juddmonte International Stakes – at York when beaten by the Derby winner, Roberto. He did, however, win his last two starts, the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and the Champion Stakes to end his career on a high note.