Boudot: the King of ParisLongchamp

PARISLONGCHAMP’s autumn season kicked off with a superb renewal of the Prix du Moulin (G1) which attracted six Group 1 winners. The race was a great spectacle with Pierre-Charles Boudot and Persian King putting up a championship performance to hold the late challenge of Pinatubo, and this pair finished 6l clear.

Boudot is the go-to jockey for ParisLongchamp and on Persian King he showed, as he was to do a week later on Mogul, that nobody is riding the track better at the moment.

The final time of 1min36.73s for the mile at ParisLongchamp was a good one without being outstanding, but Boudot’s tactical achievement was remarkable.

He went off in front from the start, which is rare in itself for a horse from the André Fabre stable, and he managed to get a clear lead over his rivals without going too fast. Persian King ran the first half of the race in 51.66s for the 800m, just a reasonable pace, but crucially at this stage he was 3l ahead of James Doyle and Pinatubo.

Persian King ran the last 800m of the race in 45.07s, a very fast time indeed, and Doyle didn’t seem to realise the hill he had to climb to catch the leader until it was too late. Persian King ran the final 400m in 21.95s, and Pinatubo ran even faster covering the distance in 21.52s, but it was too late and at the line Godolphin’s three-year-old Shamardal colt was still a length and a quarter behind Godolphin and Ballymore Thoroughbred’s four-year-old Kingman colt.

Pinatubo made up over 2l on Persian King in the final 400m, while both were speeding away from their high-class rivals, it was an impossible task and he never looked like passing the long time leader.

Persian King has a pretty faultless record of seven wins, including three Group 1s from 11 career starts. If you discount his career debut and his seasonal reappearance this year, Persian King has only been beaten twice – when second to Sottsass in the Group 1 Prix du Jockey-Club and on heavy ground in the Prix Jacques le Marois (G1) at Deauville this year behind Palace Pier.

Palace Pier, another son of Kingman, is surely the only other contender for leading honours over a mile in Europe this year.

Persian King has not always looked as good as he did in the Moulin, but the Fabretrained colt has won Group 1s when looking a little below par, and when he is at his very best it will take a top performance to beat him.

A week later on Mogul, Boudot rode a different but equally effective race to take the Group 1 Grand Prix de Paris for Aidan O’Brien.

Running the Grand Prix de Paris in September will surely be one of the innovations of 2020 which will be maintained for the future.

The race attracted a strong international field, including the English and Deutsches Derby winners, as well as Mogul, who had sometimes looked like the best of his generation in his stable, as well as Port Guillaume who had seemed to be France’s best middle-distance colt.

The race was run at a strong pace, the first 1400m was run two seconds faster than the Vermeille and a ridiculous nine seconds or 45l faster than the Prix Foy! With 600m to run Mogul, In Swoop and Gold Trip were more or less alongside each other some 6l behind the leader. When the field swung into the straight In Swoop and Gold Trip started angling out towards the middle of the track in order to get a clear run.

Meanwhile, Boudot saw his chance and switched inside instead. Mogul quickened, took up the favoured position on the far rail, and the race was over. The son of Galileo had two and a half lengths to spare at the line over In Swoop, who passed his old rival Gold Trip to take second on the line.

The O’Brien stable, like every other one in Europe, has not quite had its usual consistency this season.

Mogul is a top-class middle-distance colt and if the ratings don’t yet agree he looks to have the potential to be as good as his full-brother Japan, who won this race in July last year before running fourth in the Arc.

Shastye has become Newsells Stud’s star broodmare, but the start of her career was less than encouraging as her first foal died, while the second was injured and never raced.

Her third foal, and the first of her top horses, Secret Gesture was foaled when Shastye was already nine and looking very exposed. Secret Gesture and the fullbrothers Sir Issac Newtown, Japan and Mogul followed.

Shastye has continued to produce – Mogul is her tenth foal and her 11th, a fullsister to the new Group 1 winner, will be offered at the Tattersalls October Book 1.

In Swoop’s second place underlines that this year’s Deutsches Derby was as good as any of the European middle-distance Classic races this year, particularly as the son of Adlerflug would be better suited to softer ground.

Gestüt Schlenderhan’s colt is out of the Preis der Diana (G1) winner Iota and is a full-brother to Ito, another of his sire’s four Group 1 winners to date.

Adlerflug himself won the Deutsches Derby by 7l and is a son of In The Wings from the same female family as Galileo.

But, as he is a small and lightly built chestnut, he struggled to attract support at the beginning of his stud career. Now established as a leading middle-distance sire Adlerflug stands at Schlenderhan and from now on will have reasonable representation. He has 33 three-year-olds including In Swoop, Torquator Tasso, and Dicaprio and 54 two-year-olds from a €12,000 fee – they already include the British stakes performer Alenquer.

If the Grand Prix de Paris is to remain in September it would be logical to maintain the Prix Vermeille (G1) in its traditional place alongside Grand Prix de Paris, and to go back to restricting the race to three-yearold fillies alone.

In France, there is no other Group 1 race for three-year-old fillies over further than the 2100m of the Prix de Diane and a Vermeille for three-year-olds only would provide a much-needed incentive for middle-distance three-year-olds giving the best of them more experience before they have to compete against their elders.

This year, as is the case more often than not, the Vermeille was dominated by older fillies and mares. The first 1400m was run around two seconds slower than the colts in the Grand Prix de Paris, but from then on it was a very different race as the other jockeys allowed Frankie Dettori to control the race from the front on Dame Malliot.

Dettori, as he has done so often before, slowed the pace over the next 600m, dawdling through the false straight so everybody bunched up behind him. He then launched his filly first once they arrived in the straight and the final 400m became a sprint with the leaders covering it in 22.35s, more than 3l faster than Mogul had done.

The Aga Khan’s Shamardal filly Tarnawa showed the best turn of foot and went past Dame Malliot to win by 3l.

Raabihah was too far off the pace and took time to respond when asked to quicken, and though the daughter of Sea The Stars finished well to catch Dame Malliot on the line, she never threatened the winner, and Dettori and Dame Malliot held on at the finish an excellent third.

Tarnawa had shown plenty of promise at both two and three and is now unbeaten in two starts at four.

The daughter of Shamardal comes from an obscure Aga Khan family and her dam, a Listed winner by Cape Cross, is the only member of it in the 2020 stud book.

Tarnawa has a two-year-old halfbrother by Fastnet Rock, a half-sister foal by Siyouni and her dam was covered by Frankel in 2020.

The other trials at ParisLongchamp didn’t reveal anything new.

Anthony Van Dyck won the Group 2 Prix Foy from the front in a race which was little more than a 400m sprint.

Stradivarius finished second and showed he has the acceleration to win top races over middle-distances.

BADEN-BADEN’s Grosser Preis von Baden (G1) was a disappointing race – the German jockeys appeared to suffer a collective loss of confidence and allowed James Doyle and Franny Norton to dominate.

The race was run so slowly that Barney Roy and Communique were first and second throughout, and none of their rivals were ever able to challenge.

It was the slowest Grosser Preis von Baden run since Tiger Hill won in 1998 on very soft. Despite this year’s ground looking to be on the firm side of good, the final time was nine seconds, more than 40l, slower than Ghaiyyath recorded in 2019!

There were, however, two excellent performances at the meeting – Gestüt Hachtsee’s Samum filly Zamrud was a comfortable winner of the Group 2 T von Zastrow Stutenpreis over 2400m, and Gestüt Auenquelle’s two-year-old Soldier Hollow filly Reine D’Amour proving the best of a strong group of two-year-olds in the 1400m Group 3 Zukunftsrennen.

British handicappers rated this year’s Preis der Diana little better than a Listed race and Zamrud was given a rating of 102 for her second behind Miss Yoda. At Baden-Baden the Sarah Steinberg-trained filly met the 113-rated Rose Of Kildare, trained by Mark Johnston, but it was Zamrud who ran out the easy winner with Rose Of Kildare in third.

The Zukundftsrennen attracted nine colts and fillies who had all shown considerable promise and included Waldersee and Sardasht, who had both shown good form in France, as well as Timotheus, the winner of a big auction race in Germany.

But it was Reine D’Amour got up to win in the final stride defeating the Zoffany colt Juanito, owned by Colgone FC’s goalkeeper Timo Horn, with Gestüt Roettgen’s Shila, a daughter of Lord of England, a close third.

Reine D’Amour was one of least experienced in field having won on her debut in Cologne just a month earlier. She is the 26th Group winner produced by Soldier Hollow, a top-class sire of two-year-olds, milers and 1m2f horses.

Reine D’Amour has every chance of becoming her sire’s third champion two-yearold filly in the last five years after Well Spoken and Whispering Angel.

Bjorn Nielsen’s six-year-old ran the final 400m in 21.67s, only a length or so slower than Pinatubo had done in the Moulin a week earlier.

Godolphin’s Earthlight won the Group 3 Prix du Pin comfortably enough, but then the son of Shamardal didn’t have to be anywhere near his best to defeat his rivals.

There has been a lot wailing and gnashing in the French racing press about the lack of highly-rated French-trained horses in 2020, and particularly for the three and two-year-olds.

If you look at the lists by ratings in the Racing Post this is clearly the case, but I am not convinced this is entirely due to the lack of quality in France.

Most British-based handicappers don’t rate all of the French racing, but instead tend to give ratings to the best races based upon the British-trained runners.

This sounds fair enough, but French and British racing is not the same. Because of the different way the races are usually run the distances between runners at the end of these races are not what they would be in England where races are run fast from the start.

This bias is in a normal year to some degree corrected by the performances of French-trained horses in England.

Last year, for instance, the Racing Post put Watch Me up 11lb after her victory at Royal Ascot. This year French horses have been unable to perform in Britain, and so the bias is stronger than ever.

However, there is no doubt that the French-trained two-year-olds crop has so far not looked vintage.

Impressive maiden winners such as Midlife Crisis, Valloria or Harajuku have disappointed on their second starts.

The two decent-looking maiden winners on the opening day at ParisLongchamp had finished behind Midlife Crisis and Valloria on their debuts.

The Yan Barberot-trained Acclamation colt Bouttemont, bred by Elizabeth Fabre and second to Midlife Crisis at Deauville, won with ease over 1600m, while the Wertheimer-owned Camelot filly Viruosite, second to Valloria in Deauville, broke her maiden on her second start winning by three-quarters of a length in a fast time.