PRIX DE L’ARC DE TRIOMPHE
Sunday 1st October, 3:05pm
Ace Impact @ 3/1
Hukum @ 5/1
Continuous @ 6/1
Westover @ 7/1
Feed The Flame @ 8/1
view odds
*prices correct at time of writing.
RACE
The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe – the Arc – is as iconic to international horseracing as the eponymous Paris monument is to the wider world. At Paris Longchamp racecourse in the leafy autumnal splendour of the Bois de Boulogne, the race has provided a stage for many of flat racing’s most fabled names to show off their brilliance – everyone has a favourite: it’s Mill Reef for me. Soon-to-retire Frankie Dettori is the most successful jockey and looks for a seventh success on Free Wind, while Place De Carrousel may be rated a long-shot but she has the singular advantage of being trained by eight-time winner Andre Fabre, plus fillies have an excellent record. In contrast, Japan has famously endured a string of near-misses so victory for the mare Through Seven Seas, which ran world champion Equinox to a neck in June, would represent an historic moment.
MARKET
The French have had a memorable season in their own headline races and unbeaten favourite Ace Impact has led the way, living up to his name from a winter race at Cagnes-Sur-Mer to Derby glory in the Prix du Jockey Club, before receiving mixed reviews for a narrow success at Deauville. However, although the colt is fine with conditions (expected to be good to soft) and has a decent draw in stall eight, this is a first attempt at a mile-and-a-half so stamina doubts linger – which they clearly don’t for his perceived main rivals. Hukum, who, along with trainer Owen Burrows and his team, deserves all the plaudits that have come along after career obituaries were written following serious injury in 2022, fought out a memorable finish to Ascot’s King George, over this distance, with last year’s Arc sixth Westover, whose trainer Ralph Beckett is in a vein of form for which ‘scintillating’ hardly does justice. And Continuous gets a €120,000 late entry off the back of a fine St Leger victory, but there’s plenty of prejudice associated with no horse ever having completed the Doncaster-Longchamp double.
CORNELIUS’ QUARTET
Bay Bridge (well-drawn in six) revelled in this distance at Kempton when emulating Enable’s route to Paris glory in 2018 and a bold bid for the Sir Michael Stoute-trained five-year-old is anticipated; the photo-finish defeat of the Gosdens’ Free Wind by Warm Heart at York is all the more creditable after the winner’s subsequent Prix Vermeille exploits; German racing has enjoyed notable Arc success in recent years and Deutsches Derby hero Fantastic Moon, another supplementary entry, carries high hopes after his Prix Niel success especially as likely conditions are favourable; Feed The Flame was runner-up in the Niel but this has always been his aim.
WINNER
It isn’t necessarily a vintage Arc but it’s highly competitive, and personally I’m with Continuous. It may only be fifteen days since that terrific St Leger triumph, but he’s clearly thriving, he’s well-drawn (seven) and if anyone is going to break the St Leger/Arc hoodoo, it is this one’s trainer.
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