Although he never won a major weight-for-age race, his wins in handicaps led to him being controversially rated the best British three-year-old of his generation in 1974.
After showing promise as a two-year-old in 1973, when he won two of his six races, Take A Reef made rapid progress in the following year to win the Epsom Handicap, Magnet Cup and Extel Stakes under increasingly heavy weights.
She was a descendant of the influential broodmare Hornet, making her a distant relative of many major winners including Rule of Law, Teenoso and Sir Percy.
[1] As a yearling, Take A Reef was acquired for 7,600 guineas[2] by Tony Villar in partnership with his mother-in-law Betty Fyfe-Jamieson[3] and sent into training with Bruce Hobbs at his Palace House stable in Newmarket, Suffolk.
The colt was then moved up in distance for the Tote Roll-Up Nursery, a handicap race for juveniles over one mile at Doncaster Racecourse in September.
In the Cosmopolitan Cup over the same distance at Lingfield Park Racecourse he failed to recover after being badly hampered at half way and finished fourth.
In July, Take A Reef carried a weight of 124 pounds when he was matched against older horses in the valuable John Smith's Magnet Cup over ten and a half furlongs at York Racecourse.
There was no International Classification of European two-year-olds in 1973: the official handicappers of Britain, Ireland and France compiled separate rankings for horses which competed in those countries.