Today’s Longchamp fancies:
12.23 Long- Ma Mome (e/w).
12.58 Long- Al Doha (win).
1.33 Long- Benny Ben & Khabesa (e/w).
2.15 Long- Dalmanndi & Sea Breaker (e/w).
2.50 Long- see link above.
3.30 Long- see link above.
4.05 Long- Cashanda (e/w).
4.40 Long- Go Athletico (e/w).
5.15 Long- Cognac & On Y Va (e/w).
5.50 Long- Uri & Murrayfield (e/w).
Today’s Longchamp fancies:
12.58 Long- Royal Cadeau (e/w).
1.33 Long- Zerafa (e/w).
2.15 Long- Variyni & Pedrito (e/w).
2.50 Long- Around The World & Blush (e/w).
3.25 Long- Mondo Man (e/w).
4.00 Long- Feed The Flame (win).
4.35 Long- Ottery (win).
5.10 Long- Stormy Night (e/w).
(BBC Oct 2 2022)
Alpinista won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for the 74-year-old British trainer Sir Mark Prescott.
Luke Morris guided the grey mare to victory in Europe’s richest race for the biggest success in 53 years of training for the popular Prescott.
“I’m lucky to get a good one at this time of my career,” said the Newmarket trainer at Paris Longchamp.
Alpinista beat Vadeni, under Christophe Soumillon, with 2021 winner Torquator Tasso third for Frankie Dettori.
The Harrow School-educated Prescott, a renowned raconteur, lives alone and gets up before 4am every day.
The sixth successive Group One victory for Alpinista – owned and bred by Kirsten Rausing – reduced Prescott to tears and earned prize money of about £2.5m.
The 7-2 favourite, a daughter of the great Frankel, was welcomed back to the winner’s enclosure with raucous cheers.
“It has been a great day, the best day of my racing life,” said Prescott, who was making his first trip to Longchamp for 21 years.
“She’s does everything right, she made training easy, she’s got a little bit better every time.”
He also trained the mare’s mother and grandmother.
Japanese hope Titleholder set a good pace on heavy ground but Morris, always travelling sweetly on five-year-old Alpinista, hit the front approaching the final furlong and she stayed on stoutly to repel her closest challengers.
Morris, 33, showed little sign of nerves on his first ride in the race but was overcome after he crossed the line.
“It is very much the pinnacle of my career – I cannot thank them enough for giving me the opportunity and then to deliver for them on the day,” he said.
“I cannot describe how emotional I am. I was holding back tears on my way in and usually I am in control of those emotions.”
Vadeni was half a length back for Soumillon, who was allowed to ride, with his a 60-day ban for elbowing rival Rossa Ryan out of the saddle on Friday starting later this month.
Posted in Blogroll
Tagged alpinista, longchamp, ParisLongchamp, prix de l'arc de triomphe
(Greg Wood Sun 3rd Oct 2021)
For just the third time in 100 runnings of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, a horse trained in Germany was first across the line on Sunday, to the great surprise of almost every racegoer at Longchamp, and punters across Europe and beyond.
Torquator Tasso and Rene Piechulek were 69-1 shots on the French Tote and 80-1 with British bookmakers to win one of the strongest Arcs for many years, but chased down the better-fancied Tarnawa and Hurricane Lane well inside the final furlong to win by three-quarters of a length.
This was an Arc that confounded expectations from start to finish. Adayar, the Derby winner, and Japan’s big hope, Chrono Genesis were drawn wide in 11 and 14 respectively, but somehow found their way to the front with a mile still to run, in Chrono Genesis’s case after racing alone in the middle of the track for the first three furlongs under Oisin Murphy.
They were still first and second on the final turn, and William Buick soon kicked Adayar into a useful lead, challenging the field to pick up and catch him on heavy, holding ground. He was just in front with a furlong to run but Hurricane Lane, the St Leger winner, and Dermot Weld’s mare Tarnawa were closing and finally got to him half a furlong from the post.
All the while, though, the yellow colours of Torquator Tasso had been staying on steadily on their outside, and just as it seemed two of the favourites would fight out the finish, Piechulek swamped the pair of them with an irresistible final drive for the line.
The result was met with stunned silence in the grandstand, and Piechulek and Marcel Weiss – Torquator Tasso’s trainer, who is only in his second year with a licence – were struggling to absorb their achievement in the moments after the race.
“I still can’t put it into words,” Weiss said, a few minutes after securing only the third Arc success for Germany after Star Appeal in 1975 and Danedream in 2011. “I can’t really digest it, I’m stumbling for words. We started to plan for the Arc last winter. Before the Arc, he had produced some very good performances, he was a Group One winner, and even though I thought this was the strongest Arc of the last few years, I thought he deserved to start. We would have been very happy if he had finished third, fourth, fifth or sixth, that would have been a success. The ground came in our favour, and then the race went as we wanted.”
Piechulek was riding in the Arc for the first time and could not have wished for a smoother debut. “I’m very honoured that I was able to ride in such a race,” he said. “I think it’s going to be tomorrow before I realise what it really means. There was not a lot of pace in the race and I tried to get a position towards the leading horses so that when we got to the final straight I could really launch my horse. He’s a horse that gets better and faster the longer the straight, so I wanted to make use of it.”
This was the third Group One success of Torquator Tasso’s career but his first outside Germany, which gave punters very little to go on beforehand in terms of form to tie him in with horses such as Adayar, Hurricane Lane and Tarnawa. After more than 20mm of rain in less than 24 hours at Longchamp, though, a handful of backers at least may have taken a chance on his stout German pedigree, as the stallion Adlerflug – also the sire of last year’s German-trained Arc runner‑up, In Swoop – is as strong an influence for stamina as you could find.
This was still one of the biggest surprises in Arc history, however, and Charlie Appleby, the trainer of both Hurricane Lane and Adayar, was among those trying to make sense of it all afterwards. “William said unfortunately his horse has jumped and he had to go on the front end because he was never going to get any cover,” Appleby said.
“He didn’t like that ground but it was another brave performance by the horse, and he showed his class there travelling into the straight when he was trying to pick up.
“At one stage it looked like [Hurricane Lane] was going to produce a run that was potentially going to win an Arc but full credit to the winner, we knew it was going to be a gruelling race at the finish, and that’s what it was.”
Posted in Blogroll
Tagged 100th Arc, longchamp, ParisLongchamp, prix de l'arc de triomphe, torquator tasso
(BBC 4 Oct 2020)
Sottsass won a dramatic Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe as Enable finished sixth in her attempt to win Europe’s richest race for a record third time.
The first five home were trained in France, with Sottsass (13-2) finishing ahead of In Swoop and Persian King.
A stewards’ inquiry took place into interference between runners but the result was not affected.
Sottsass, ridden by Cristian Demuro for trainer Jean-Claude Rouget, was third behind Waldgeist and Enable in 2019.
Enable was prominent entering the finishing straight but the 2017 and 2018 winner struggled in the very soft ground.
“It was too deep [the ground] – it killed her action,” said Dettori.
Sottsass held on as German Derby winner In Swoop finished strongly to take second while long-time leader Persian King was third.
Winning rider Demuro and several of his fellow jockeys were called into the stewards’ room to watch the finish and give their version of events.
The last Arc winner to be disqualified was Sagace, who was thrown out in favour of Rainbow Quest 35 years ago, but there was relief for the Sottsass team as the result was confirmed.
“It is great to win the Arc of course because it is like no other race,” said Rouget.
“By the time the Arc comes the horses are tired and the ground is unpredictable.
“We won because we prepared the horse for this race. We lost races this year in order to win this one.”
The Arc was watched by just 1,000 spectators under coronavirus protocols.
Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien withdrew his four runners on Saturday night after they tested positive for a banned substance, which has been blamed on contaminated feed.
If Prix de l’Arc de Triomphes were decided by clap-ometer Enable would have won the race for the third time but, ultimately, John Gosden’s great racemare’s shot at racing history came up just short when she finished a gallant second to the 13-1 shot Waldgeist in the Longchamp mud.
She went down fighting but her place as one of the all-time great racehorses had already been assured long before Sunday.
But instead of inaugurating a one-horse club of three time Arc winners, she remains in the eight horse group of horses to have won it twice and it was Andre Fabre who re-wrote a new chapter for racing’s history books by extending his own record as the race’s most successful trainer to eight wins.
John Gosden, Enable’s trainer, had been worried about further overnight rain in Paris and rightly so.
But when Frankie Dettori kicked on Enable in the home-straight after what appeared to be a perfect race, shaking off the big two three-year-old colts, Sottsass (third) and Japan (fourth), it looked like the mare would last out in front of a 45,000 crowd half of whom are reckoned to have followed her across the Channel.
But, according to the jockey, she was a ‘spent force’ a furlong out and when Waldgeist – German for ‘ghost of the wood’ – and Pierre-Charles Boudot swooped down the outside hitting the front with 50m to go, she was empty.
“The ground was very sticky,” said Dettori after Enable had been cheered and applauded louder than the winner back into the spot reserved for the runner-up.
“I struggled early on but she seemed to come good for me in the false straight. I waited to the three (300m pole) but at the two the filly was really tired, she was a spent force. The ground had a lot to do with it.”
Gosden was philosophical about the defeat, only her second in 15 starts. “She ran a great race,” he explained. “They went very hard in the testing conditions. I was quite shocked by the pace set by Ghaiyyath and Magical. I couldn’t believe they were going that fast.
“Frankie sat off it and when Sottsass came to him he thought ‘I’ll go now.’ He looked like he had the race won and he was simply beaten by a horse that Andre has been very happy with this year. He just outstayed us in the ground.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled with her but it’s a pity it rained because she has a great turn of foot and it blunted that. Stamina gave out with her over that trip in the intensity and pace of the race. She’s run a blinder but we knew when the extra rain came we’d lost our most potent weapon.
Lord Grimthorpe, Khalid Abdullah’s racing manager, added: “The weight of expectation was so enormous. The goodwill and and good wishes have been unbelievable. It’s not quite what we hoped for but how can we complain? We love her dearly and we don’t love her any less now.”
Although Enable had beaten Waldgeist three times before, in last year’s Arc, the Breeders’ Cup and in the King George, the five-year-old, owned jointly by the German breeders Gestut Ammerland and Newsells Park Stud in Hertfordshire, finally exacted his revenge. It may have been 13 years since Rail Link gave Fabre his seventh winner in the race but he again proved he should never be under-estimated in what has become his signature race.
Fabre, 73, a former jump jockey has been champion trainer in France 29 times, still refuses to speak to the French racing press after they questioned his early successes and won his first Arc with Trempolino in 1987.
Pierre-Charles Boudot, 26, twice French champion with over 300 winners in 2016, explained that Waldgeist only really started to engage with the race in the false straight. “But he came into his own when I pulled him out in the straight. Every jockey wants to win the Arc so it will always be very special.”
While a decision about Enable’s future is expected to be made later this week, the winner’s owner, Dietrich Von Boetticher, was inclined to retire Waldgeist at the top. “But,” he added, “I’ve known Andre so long I wouldn’t dare make a decision without his approval.”
Posted in Blogroll
Tagged longchamp, ParisLongchamp, prix de l'arc de triomphe, Waldgeist
(Sun 7th Oct 2018 Greg Wood)
“May the best man win,” the track announcer said, a few seconds before the stalls opened for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe here on Sunday. Two and a half minutes later, though, it was two fillies that crossed the line separated by a short neck, as Enable held off Sea Of Class to become only the seventh dual winner of the race. Which of them is the better racehorse, however, is still as much a matter of opinion as it was on Sunday morning.
Enable did not run up to her very best form here, which was to be expected after an 11-month gap between her victory at Chantilly last October and her attempt to follow up back at the Arc’s traditional home on the outskirts of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne. She was also tiring in the closing stages after sitting close to a strong pace for much of the race.
In every other respect, however, she enjoyed a perfect trip around Longchamp under Frankie Dettori, who was riding in his 30th Arc and winning for the sixth time. Dettori was able to take a prominent position from his ideal draw in stall six and then pick his moment in the straight to carve out a lead that was shrinking by the moment in the closing stages but ultimately proved decisive.
James Doyle, on Sea Of Class, had none of those luxuries. From his wide draw in 15 he had little option but to “drop her out the back and pray”, as no less an expert than Lester Piggott put it beforehand to his daughter, Maureen Haggas, the wife of Sea Of Class’s trainer, William.
Doyle turned right coming out of the stalls and settled Sea Of Class second-last of the 19 runners. There he was forced to stay, perhaps 20 lengths off the lead and at least 15 adrift of Enable, until he shook the reins and asked his mount to quicken at the top of the final straight. It was a magnificent charge, with echoes of Mtoto’s brave but futile attempt to run down Tony Bin in Dettori’s first Arc back in 1988, and while Doyle and Sea Of Class found a way past 16 opponents, Enable and Dettori defied all their efforts.
“She did everything I asked and just cruised through and in another three strides, we would have won,” Doyle said. “It was always going to be hard from that draw.”
Sea Of Class and Enable could both return to Longchamp next year for a rematch, though Prince Khalid Abdullah, Enable’s owner, may be as keen to breed from his filly as he is to attempt an unprecedented third success. On Sunday, though, the glory belonged to Dettori and Enable and the rider set out to celebrate as only he can.
“This was probably my most nervous [in any Arc],” Dettori said afterwards. “I found myself in a fantastic spot, the first part of the race she was OK and, as we got to the false straight, the life in the old girl came back. I knew then we were in business. I waited as long as I could and, when I said ‘come on, let’s go’, the trademark turn of foot was there. The last 50 yards she was tired but she’d had 11 months off and only one prep race. She wasn’t the Enable of last year but she’s got the job done.”
John Gosden paid tribute to Enable’s willing attitude after a truncated season that started only in September.
“She has a fantastic mind and she’s a real competitor,” Gosden said. “It’s like being a football manager when you’ve got someone who always goes out and gives you 100% and you can build a team around them. She’s one of those.
“I had a tiny hiccup between [her prep run at] Kempton and here, which I didn’t need. It was a slight temperature thing. Aidan [O’Brien] tried to make it a test of stamina [for his five runners] and there’s no doubt that the way it was run tested her fitness to the umpteenth degree.
“The last 100m were an eternity for myself, the jockey and the filly but in the final analysis it’s down to her and also to Prince Khalid Abdullah, who’s produced a filly like this. He’s here today to see her win a second Arc and it’s really all about him and the filly.”
Haggas was struggling to put his thoughts into words in the immediate aftermath of the race. “You can’t, really,” he said. “James had to ride her like that. Another stride and it would have been a great ride. She’s a brilliant filly, though. It was a great race from that draw and James made a very brave decision to do what he did. But I’m thrilled with him and I’m thrilled with her.”
Following only two trips to the track so far this year it seems likely that Enable will now head to the Turf at the Breeders’ Cup in Kentucky early next month, a meeting that her owner has always supported. She is now an odds-on chance to win at Churchill Downs, while Sea Of Class, assuming that she stays in training, seems certain to have a campaign in 2019 built around a return to Longchamp next October with a score to settle.
Posted in Blogroll
Tagged Enable, Frankie Dettori, longchamp, ParisLongchamp, prix de l'arc de triomphe
(Sun 1st Oct 2017 Greg Wood)
By Frankie Dettori’s standards there was a definite sense of restraint about the celebrations after Enable had given him a record-breaking fifth success in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe here on Sunday. There was a kiss blown to the crowd and, of course, the flying dismount but none of the adrenaline-fuelled, let-it-rip jubilation that followed his Derby success on Golden Horn two years ago.
Perhaps it was just too easy, too routine almost, to get Dettori’s blood pumping. “It was too perfect,” he said afterwards. “Unbelievable. I’m thinking, is this real or am I dreaming? It happened exactly like I thought and she won like I thought. Usually in an Arc something happens but it was so smooth, so effortless.”
If there was a moment when Dettori made the difference, it came early, as he tried to work his way into an ideal position to cruise round Chantilly’s right-handed turns and then pounce in the home straight. Like everything else in his fifth Arc, the manoeuvre was seamless.
“I’d said to John [Gosden, Enable’s trainer] that basically I’ve got 400 metres [two furlongs] to find out what’s going to happen. If I have to, I’ll have to make the running but then I saw Idaho running free and so I let him slot in. Then I could see Order Of St George creeping on to my quarters, so I checked behind, managed to drag her back and get behind Order Of St George.
“At that moment, job done. I was exactly where I wanted her, I had free air on my left and she was running away on the turn. I thought that at York [in August, when Enable won the Yorkshire Oaks] I went a bit too early, so [in the straight] I thought, count to 10, wait to the 400. She gave me that burst of three or four lengths and then sustained it and I was just counting down the markers.”
Enable carried the same colours here as Dancing Brave, who won the Arc for her owner, Prince Khalid Abdullah, back in 1986, but the contrast with his charging run past most of the field could not have been more complete.
Rarely has an Arc been won with so little fuss or drama and Dettori is in no doubt that Enable is the best filly he has ridden in his three decades in the saddle. Cloth Of Stars stayed on to finish two and a half lengths behind her for André Fabre – the first and only French-trained horse to make the frame in the two Arcs staged at Chantilly – while Ulysses, twice a Group One winner at 10 furlongs this season, was a creditable third. But Enable’s domination of 17 rivals was complete.
Dettori’s status as the most successful jockey in Arc history is now absolute as well. “I’m the first to five and it’s a great achievement but I’ve had 29 goes at it,” he said, “so maybe five is not such a great strike-rate.
“Every one has been special but, when you ride a 4-5 favourite in the Arc, even I was nervous. But if you don’t get nervous, you’re not human.”
Gosden, who waited decades for an Arc winner but has now won the race twice in three years, said that his jockey had made “one brilliant manoeuvre early on to give her a perfect shot at the race”, and senses that Enable has probably run her last race as a three-year-old and possibly of her career.
“To me she’s done everything you could ask of her this year,” Gosden said. “She’s really only had one very busy season so there’s a possibility she might stay in training next year and go to the new Longchamp. She’s truly exceptional, straight out of the top drawer. Golden Horn was a wonderful horse and I find it hard to compare, but it’s fantastic, normally the buses don’t come along too often like that on the rainy days. We’ll see whether she races next year. We’ll have to talk to Prince Khalid.”
Treve, in 2013 and 2014, showed that it is possible for a filly to return to the Arc as a four-year-old and win, and Enable is quoted at around 5-2 by one bookmaker to win for a second time next year. Workforce, the most recent of Prince Khalid’s five Arc winners prior to Enable’s success, remained in training, but Dancing Brave, Rail Link and Rainbow Quest all went to stud and the owner is well-known for taking as much pleasure from breeding thoroughbreds as racing them.
If Enable is in the field next October, the first Arc at the new Longchamp will be one to savour. If her racing days are over, she will retire as one of the most talented middle-distance fillies for decades, and an Arc winner who did it all so easily that Frankie Dettori had time to wonder if it was all a dream.
After his 1-2-3 in 2016, Aidan O’Brien’s five-strong team could not find even a place in the frame in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, but the trainer added two more Group One victories on the Chantilly undercard to his double at Newmarket on Saturday and moved to 22 for the season, within sight of Bobby Frankel’s all-time record of 25.
O’Brien’s 21st Group One was the result of an unusual decision for the stable, sending the filly Happily up against colts in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere.
The obvious race for her was the Prix Marcel Boussac, in which her stable companion Magical finished fourth behind Wild Illusion, but the switch to face the colts with a 4lb allowance proved inspired, as Happily stayed on strongly to win by a length-and-a-quarter.
O’Brien himself remains reluctant to talk about Frankel’s record, never mind admit that it might be a target, and credited “the lads” in the Coolmore Stud syndicate which owns his horses for the decision to target the Lagardere.
“It was a brave call,” O’Brien said. “She’s a tough, hardy filly and is a sister to [the 2015 2,000 Guineas winner] Gleneagles. She showed she got the mile well, so we think the [Juvenile] fillies’ race [at the Breeders’ Cup] could suit her.”
Happily has now won Group One races at seven furlongs and a mile and looks an obvious contender for next year’s Oaks, for which she is top-priced at 7-1.
The Prix de l’Opera was in the bag for Ballydoyle from some way out as his two runners, Rhododendron and Hydrangea, started to draw clear of their field, but it was only in the final strides that Rhododendron, the runner-up behind Enable in the Oaks at Epsom, managed to get the better of her stablemate.
“Rhododendron is a very special filly,” O’Brien said, “to do what she did after what happened to her in the [Prix de] Diane [where she was pulled up with a broken blood vessel].
“The bad day she had the last time she came here stopped her for six weeks and the lads did a great job to get her back. She’s all class and we thought she would win the Oaks, only for her to run into Enable.”
Twenty-six Group One wins in a season is such a remarkable total that even after adding two more to his haul at Newmarket on Saturday, O’Brien was still a 4-5 chance to reach it.
The Irish trainer’s latest double was enough to shrink the odds dramatically, however, and he is now as short as 1-8 with Paddy Power, and 1-4 with William Hill to reach the target. Champions Day at Ascot in three weeks offers several chances to edge closer, but the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar in early November would be a more likely, and appropriate, stage for O’Brien to make history.
All six of the Group One events on the card at Chantilly were won by horses from British or Irish stables, and Battaash, from the Charlie Hills yard, and Martyn Meade’s Aclaim completed the rout of the home contingent in the Prix de l’Abbaye and Prix de la Foret respectively.
Battaash finished well beaten behind Marsha in the Nunthorpe Stakes at York after boiling over in the preliminaries, but he was much more relaxed this time and never looked like being headed after a fast start. Marsha was four lengths adrift in second at the line and Battaash, on his day, looks like the best sprinter in Europe by some margin.
The Turf Sprint at the Breeders’ Cup is likely to be his next assignment – he is 11-4 from 8-1 with Paddy Power – but Aclaim may have run his last race after giving Meade his first Group One winner.
“He’s a tough little horse,” Meade said. “He tries so hard that he reduces me to tears. He’s won a Group One and it’s job done.”
Posted in Blogroll
Tagged Enable, Frankie Dettori, longchamp, ParisLongchamp, prix de l'arc de triomphe
Sun 2nd Oct 2016 (Greg Wood)
“It’s like Frankie’s seven winners or Michael Dickinson’s first five in the Gold Cup,” Michael Tabor said here on Sunday after seeing his colours carried to victory by Found in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. “Things like that aren’t supposed to happen but sometimes they do.”
It was not Found’s presence in the winner’s enclosure that made this year’s Arc remarkable but the historic triumph which it spearheaded for Aidan O’Brien, her trainer, who also saddled Highland Reel and Order Of St George to finish second and third. It is believed to be the first time a trainer has sent out the first three home in the Arc’s 96-year history and even the youngest among the 40,000 racegoers here are unlikely to see it happen again.
Typically O’Brien deflected the acclaim towards the team at his County Tipperary stable afterwards but even by his standards a 1-2-3 in the Arc is an achievement to stand comparison with anything in his career. Several opponents, including Postponed, the strong favourite from Roger Varian’s yard in Newmarket, failed to produce their best form but in the end Team O’Brien was simply too good.
So, too, was Ryan Moore on Found, who was drawn wide in stall 12 but had settled into a perfect position against the inside rail with a mile to run. Found was seventh as the field turned for home with Vedevani, the pacemaker for Harzand, the Derby winner, still in front, but she was travelling strongly and, as soon as a gap appeared on Vedevani’s outside, Moore seized the chance to strike for home.
Found was quickly in a clear lead and, though she had finished second at Group One level in all five of her previous starts, there was never any chance that it would be surrendered. Highland Reel, the King George winner, was a length and three-quarters behind her at the line, while Order Of St George was another length and a half in front of Siljan’s Saga and Postponed. Harzand was ninth, while Makahiki, attempting to give Japan its first win in the Arc, was a bitter disappointment, finishing 14th of the 16 runners.
“She won a [Prix Marcel] Boussac at this time of year and also a Breeders’ Cup Turf,” Moore said. “She’s been frustrating sometimes but this has probably been the main aim all year. She was back to a mile and a half in an evenly run race and she showed what she’s capable of. At her best she’s a very hard filly to beat.
“It’s quite incredible [for O’Brien] to get all three horses there in top shape and beat the best around. It’s the hardest race to win in Europe every year. To have the first three home is unreal.”
O’Brien, who trains for John Magnier’s Coolmore Stud syndicate, was quick to point out that his three runners were all sired by Galileo, the Derby winner in 2001. “It’s a privilege to be here and to be part of it,” he said. “I couldn’t dream that this would happen. We know how difficult the Arc is. She’s only run over a mile and a half four times and she was unlucky in the Arc last year. We’ve had our eye on this for a long time. When Ryan rode her as a two-year-old, he said she could win an Arc and he was right.”
Varian’s disappointment at Postponed’s failure to raise a significant challenge was palpable. “Andrea [Atzeni, his jockey] said he felt great going to post but after breaking well he was trapped three wide early on and couldn’t get in.
“It meant he met the big bend on the wrong lead and then he didn’t quicken up like he can. It’s disappointing as we went in hoping we would win, but the main thing is we still have a horse to go to war with.”
Found finished second in the Champion Stakes at Ascot and then went on to beat Golden Horn, the Derby and Arc winner, in the Breeders’ Cup Turf after her run in the Arc last year, so there is every chance that she has not yet finished for the season. A return to America for the Breeders’ Cup Turf in just under five weeks’ time seems likely and she is no better than 7-4, with BetFred, for a repeat win in the Turf at Santa Anita next month.
Wuheida, whose only previous start had been a maiden victory at Newmarket in August, ran away with the Group One Prix Marcel Boussac earlier on the card and is now favourite for both the One Thousand Guineas and Oaks next season with most bookmakers. “I’ve always thought of her as an Oaks filly,” Charlie Appleby, her trainer, said, “and the further she goes, the better she will be.”
Criquette Head-Maarek, who saddled Treve to win the Arc in 2013 and 2014, has endured a miserable season but has more to look forward to next year after the victory of National Defense in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere. The success was just Head-Maarek’s third winner in 2016, but the trainer hopes that National Defense “will be a Guineas horse”. She added: “We’ve had a terrible year, the horses were sick for a long time but they are coming back to themselves now.”
Newmarket trainer Sir Mark Prescott was celebrating after Marsha won the Prix de l’Abbaye in the hands of Luke Morris. The winning rider said: “The boss had freshened her up for this, we’ve always had high hopes for her and this is the icing on the cake.”
Brian Pothecary was representing the 10,000-strong members of the Elite Racing Club and said: “I’m very lucky to represent Elite here today, as one of three coachloads of owners who were selected by ballot to attend. I doubt whether she will run again this year and I very much hope she stays in training as a four-year-old.”
Michael Dods will take his time before committing Mecca’s Angel, who was favourite but finished third, to what would be the final start of her career in the British Champions Sprint on October 15.
He said: “She’s run a good race. I’m not using the ground as an excuse. I don’t think she likes to be crowded, and maybe that had something to do with it
“We’ll see how she comes home, we’ll give her the full week to get home and relax and then we’ll decide about Ascot. If she is in good form and has a good week the following week we’ll seriously think about Champions Day. I’d love to see her over six furlongs at some stage.”
In the final race of the day Limato was a comfortable winner of the Prix de la Foret for Lambourn handler Henry Candy but there is a difference of opinion in the victorious camp about the Breeders’ Cup target for the horse. Winning rider Harry Bentley said “He’s got an incredible turn of foot, but he does settle in his races, too. He really is a class act.”
Candy said: “The race worked out really, really well. The horse was really relaxed and Harry was able to take a pull. It was lovely to see the way he quickened up like that.”
Assessing plans, Candy added: “It [Breeders’ Cup] is a definite possibility. We’ll have to discuss it, but I’d rather run him in the Mile than the Sprint.”
Winning owner Paul Jacobs cautioned: “I’m not sure about the Mile, we’ll have to see. The Mile is a lot more valuable, but it’s a lot more competitive.”
Posted in Blogroll
Tagged Found, longchamp, ParisLongchamp, prix de l'arc de triomphe
(Sun 4th Oct 2015 Greg Wood)
Revenge, Frankie Dettori said afterwards, was the last thing on his mind as he passed the furlong pole in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe here on Sunday, certain beyond all doubt that he had the race won on Golden Horn. Yet he must, at least, have felt the warm glow of vindication as he worked the crowd afterwards as only Dettori can. The ride that left Treve, the favourite, among the chasing pack, two lengths or more behind him, was as close to perfection as any in his 25-year career.
Dettori could have been riding Treve, as he is retained as No1 rider by Sheikh Joaan al-Thani, her owner, and was in the saddle for her first two races last season. He was then “jocked off” by Criquette Head-Maarek, Treve’s trainer, who felt the riding style of Thierry Jarnet was better suited to her horse.
It was an embarrassment for such an accomplished rider but Dettori has endured more significant setbacks in recent years and has now reached the summit of Flat racing once again. Early in 2012 he was banned from racing for six months for a positive drugs test and unemployed after being sacked by Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation. He passed plenty of ambitious and talented young jockeys on the way down and has now passed them all again on the way back up.
No jockeys can make a horse run any faster than its genes allow. They can only get their mounts from start to finish as swiftly and efficiently as possible and Dettori charted a course on Golden Horn without a spare hundredth of a second at any stage. He started from a difficult wide draw, decided to stay wide, away from the other 17 runners, for the first two furlongs and then dropped in behind Shahah, who was in the race to set the pace for Treve.
He was then in the perfect position to strike for home at the top of the straight. Treve, who was a little warm before the race and did not travel smoothly on the fast ground, set off to chase him down but the sustained burst of speed that had won her the Arc for the last two years was missing. In her last race before retiring to Head-Maarek’s family stud farm she finished only fourth, with Flintshire, runner-up behind Treve 12 months ago, and New Bay filling the places. It was an overdue first victory in the Arc for John Gosden, Golden Horn’s trainer, and the second time that Dettori, a four-time winner of this race, has completed the Derby-Arc double, after Lammtarra’s victory in 1995.
“At the 300 [metres to go] he showed a turn of foot that really blew me away,” Dettori said. “I thought there’s no horse in the world that can pass me now and from the 200 to the winning post I was just enjoying myself.
“Longchamp can be very tricky. I thought, we know he stays and we know he’s good, so I said to John, the plan is to stay wide and not get too keen. It worked out exactly like I thought it would and then he just flew and it was all over. Today you saw the real Golden Horn. He’s possibly the best horse I’ve ridden on today’s performance. It was amazing. He’s put to bed a great Arc with great horses behind him like a real champion.
“There is no revenge. Treve has been a great mare. I’m only concentrating on Golden Horn today and my boss [Sheikh Joaan] was waiting for me in the winner’s enclosure and gave me a high five, so he’s a very sporting man.”
Head-Maarek, as ever, was as generous in defeat as in victory. “No excuses,” she said afterwards, and at least a dozen times before Dettori and Golden Horn had even made it back to the famous winner’s enclosure.
“It is always disappointing when you get beaten, because you are here to win,” Head-Maarek said. “But I looked at the race carefully and I thought Dettori rode an incredible race. Forget Treve. She was beaten by a very good horse, a three-year-old. Flintshire is normally behind me but today he was in front. But those things happen and New Bay [the French Derby winner] is the best horse in France, so there’s no disgrace to be beaten by those horses today.
“It’s very difficult to bring a horse to win three Arcs, it’s never been done and it’s not today. We’ll try again with other horses and I’m sure it will be done one day. She ran her race, there’s no excuses at all, not the ground, she was just beaten by a better horse and Dettori rode a fantastic race.
“She deserves it [retirement]. Use [horses] but don’t abuse. If you do, they go down the drain and it’s terrible. With a champion you can’t do that. We’ll try to find another Treve.”
Like Treve, Golden Horn will be at stud next year, with Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley operation saying on Sunday it has bought a half-share in the son of Cape Cross. But he could have a final run in the Breeders’ Cup Turf in Kentucky this month, for which most bookmakers quote him as the odds-on favourite.
“Frankie rode a gem of a race,” Gosden said. “When he was sitting a length behind the pacemaker and going nicely, I thought, this is where I want to be.
“He switched off behind the pacemaker and I knew that in the straight, he would kick relatively early. He said, the problem with the Arc is that they come at your back with arrows, and he was aware a few arrows were coming.
“It’s up to the owner [whether he runs in America] but it’s a very strong possibility. He retires this year so that would be a logical place to go. If he’s in good order next week, there’s no reason he can’t.“I’ve been waiting for this.Nathaniel was unlucky [in 2012].He was sick the week before and it was heavy. He’d have flown through that. Quite frankly it’s just great.”
I'm Steve Mullington from Rochdale. My blog is about the ups & downs of a regular punter and sports fan. A place to come to share ideas, tips and of course-friendly banter!
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