Frankel makes them go weak at the knees and in the head Frankel is a horse. That is not, admittedly, the level of insight you would normally expect in a national newspaper, but after a giddy few days at Ascot, perhaps it bears repeating. Frankel has long pointy ears and a tail. He has never used a telephone or signed an autograph or danced the Gangnam. He defecates standing up. All the available evidence suggests that he is a horse. Clearly, however, some wish it were not so. Not that any of this mattered to Willie Carson. "He eyeballs horses," he enthused. I don't know if they make horse noises to each other, but other horses are just in awe of him. And he eyeballs them. Therein, perhaps, lies the secret to Frankel's incredible record. He simply sledges his rivals into submission, like Ali gradually chipping away at an opponent's manhood. That all you got, Excelebration? What's my name, fool? What's my name? Carson's was a remarkable performance. Here is a man, lest we forget, who rode some of the finest thoroughbreds in history. Yet the mere sight of Frankel in the parade ring was sufficient to bring him to the brink of horse-gasm. How he cooed and purred and squealed, often in the same breath. "I hope he runs again," he said afterwards, "as I'd like to get the same feeling as I'm feeling now." You sense that when the time comes for the world's daintiest mares to form an orderly queue outside Frankel's stable at Newmarket, Carson may be jostling his way to the very front. Yet projecting human values on to the animal world is a trap into which we all fall. Few of us, for example, could stifle a guilty snigger when the endearingly childlike Carson said of Frankel, quite unconsciously: "I remember when I really enjoyed riding his mum." The final chapter of Frankel's remarkable career brought a more pleasant end to a sporting week pockmarked by iniquity, from Serbia to Sheffield. It was pleasing to see Sky Sports News dealing with the spectre of racism in football in its usual, considered manner, namely by barking the word "racism" at every single Premier League manager and shoving a microphone in their faces. Then, on Friday in Texas, Lance Armstrong stood up in front of 1,500 distinguished but deluded guests at a gala for his Livestrong charity. The short speech was available a matter of minutes later on YouTube, offering a rare glimpse of the cornered beast in his natural habitat. Behind him, the stage was packed with mysterious, smiling people. It was a tableau that evoked the declining years of Michael Jackson, when he felt the need to surround himself with gawping kids. Yet in sport's grimy gutters can, paradoxically, be identified the root of racing's appeal. Frankel will never take EPO and then lie about it later. He will never racially abuse a rival. He has no idea what a "Kick It Out" T-shirt is. He is unable to tweet banalities at Piers Morgan. He evokes a possibly mythical bygone age, when our sporting heroes were guilty of nothing more than a little light eyeballing. Perhaps that explains why people like him so much.