EUROPEAN TRAINER HEAD ISSUE 46 v4_Jerkins feature.qxd 30/06/2014 20:55 Page 2
CRIQUETTE HEAD-MAAREK
SIMPLY CRIQUETTE The three-storey white block structure patterned with red bricks on Avenue du General Leclerc in Chantilly, in the Parisian basin of France, is partly shielded from street view by a brick-and-wroughtiron privacy fence. During working hours, a line of modest cars is parked against the wall on crumbled pavement. There’s no visible sign identifying this as Écurie Christiane Head, headquarters of one of the most successful trainers of all time and home to the reigning Arc winner.
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WORDS: FRANCES J KARON PHOTOS: ANNE-ARmEllE lANglOiS
HRISTIANE “Criquette” Head-Maarek recalls her first meeting with the horse who would secure her a place in history with a Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe win. The bay filly was about a day or two old at the time, and Head-Maarek says, “I said to Papa, ‘I’ve seen the most beautiful foal that you can imagine.’” Her papa, Alec Head, could certainly imagine a beautiful foal, or if not a beautiful one, then certainly a fast one. By his retirement at the end of 1983, he had trained the winners of four Arcs, plus the Poule d’Essai des Poulains (three), Poule d’Essai des Pouliches (two), Prix du Jockey Club (three), Prix Diane (two) and one each of the Epsom Derby, 2,000 Guineas, and 1,000 Guineas. Alec’s father Willie, who settled in France from Great Britain and was the son of a horse trainer, had had some good ones of his own, winning two Arcs and two Jockey Clubs. Willie Head’s first Arc winner, Le Paillon, won in 1947, a year before his granddaughter Criquette was born. She was nearly four in 1952 when Alec won his first Arc, with the Aga Khan’s Nuccio. Of her own future Arc winner, after their first meeting, “I followed the filly,” says Head-
Maarek. “I was in love with her.” She visited Comte Roland de Chambure’s Haras d’Etreham – where the filly was born and raised – often, and was told, “Oh, that filly, she’s very difficult. She’s always swishing her tail.” Undeterred, when Head-Maarek learned that the horse was to go through the ring at the Houghton yearling sale at Tattersalls, she told a client she would buy her if she didn’t make a “silly price.” “It’s true,” the trainer says. “She was swishing her tail all the time. But she was lovely. She had everything that my dad told me to look for in a horse. She had a beautiful shoulder with a very deep chest and a good hind leg, and she was beautiful. She was walking like something good. She had a lot of class, that filly.” Without telling her father or de Chambure – the filly’s consignor as well as being Head’s partner in the Societe Aland partnership – Head-Maarek bought the Lyphard daughter through agent BBA Ireland for 41,000 guineas on behalf of a Monsieur Lazard, a relation of the Wertheimer family matriarch Germaine. But there was a problem: “Papa came to me and said, ‘I want that filly.’” She rang her client and told him of her dilemma. He replied, “You
know, Criquette, always give preference to your dad. Buy me anything else.” She didn’t find another yearling she liked enough to purchase for Monsieur Lazard. She didn’t know it yet, but Head-Maarek had already secured perhaps the best racehorse in the sale anyway.
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In the haze of a spring drizzle, first lot is readied to go out. Head-Maarek is zipped up in a dark blue coat, wearing blue jeans and a dark-coloured wide-brimmed hat. She’s entertaining a group of students peering at the back end of a bay horse in a box midway down one side of the yard. Head lad Pascal Galoche leads the horse out, tacked up in a dark blue rug with beige trim and a beige “CH” under another, plain brown blanket and in dark blue front polo wraps. There’s no mystery as to who this is, even before HeadMaarek identifies her as Treve, last year’s Arc heroine and the most accomplished of the 80 horses in the yard. Everyone follows on foot as premier lot exits through the back gate onto Les Aigles, or “The Eagles,” and its 500 acres of tracks – turf, all weather, and dirt – carved into a forest and under the auspices of France Galop. The birds
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