Arc De Triomphe: Graeme North analysis of the ParsLongchamp trials

With little French Flat action to go at on Sunday bar a low-level listed event at Craon I’ll devote this week’s column to a round-up of last weekend's card at ParisLongchamp which has long been known as ‘Arc Trials Day’.

Any meeting that is accompanied by the moniker ‘Trials Day’ necessarily carries with it a degree of expectation, and on the face of it the latest ‘Trials Day’ seemed to fulfil that remit to the brim with both the Prix Niel winner Sosie and the Prix Vermeille heroine Bluestocking ending up as big market movers for the Arc de Triomphe on October 6, though Bluestocking will have to be supplemented and has the Champion Fillies and Mares (as well as the Champion Stakes) at Ascot on QIPCO British Champions Day as an alternative, should the ground not be deemed soft enough for her at Longchamp.

Before I delve a bit deeper into the Sunday’s action, I took the opportunity afterwards to have a look at how predictive recent Trials Days have been, focusing on the three main Arc trials, and the answer makes interesting reading.

Since and including 2017, so as to include only recent data, no less than seven of the 31 horses that contested the Prix Vermeille and then went on to run in a race at the Arc meeting won with another two managing a top-three finish. In the same period, two subsequent Arc meeting winners have emerged from the 14 Prix Foy runners with just one other reaching the top three while just one winner and two other top three placed finishers came out of the 23 runners that contested the Prix Niel.

There are logical reasons behind these figures – the Vermeille regularly attracts bigger fields than the other two races and beaten horses (or even winning horses) have several other options besides the Arc, while the big-race itself isn’t open to geldings who may have run in the Foy or Niel or even arguably a realistic option for beaten horses which ended up finished behind those horses ineligible for the Arc.

None of the last four Arc winners even turned up on Arc Trials Day, the last one who did was the Prix Foy winner Waldgeist in 2019. In total, 19 horses who contested the Prix Foy (five of them winners) ran in the Arc itself with Cloth of Stars (who never won the Foy) the only other alongside Waldgeist to finish in the top three.

Nine Niel runners (and three winners) went on to the Arc with Sottsass doing best of all of them with third place in 2019 (eighth was the next best placing any of the other octet managed); while only three runners from the Vermeille have gone on to run in the Arc (no winners) with fifth place the best any of the trio managed.

Those statistics would suggest the prospective 2024 Arc winner probably missed Trials Day, but with Kyprios, City of Troy, White Birch and Auguste Rodin and Economics all seemingly set to miss the race and Calandagan, Goliath, Iresine and Zarir ineligible because they are geldings the 2024 renewal might well not follow recent patterns. So, what did Sunday's races unearth?

Vermeille the quickest of the trials

The Vermeille was by far the swiftest of the three Arc trials with Bluestocking passing the post in 2.31.53 compared with Iresine’s 2.24.15 (in the Foy) and Sosie’s 2.34.33. The Vermeille was something of an oddity in that despite attracting the biggest field since 2012 it produced a very ragged start for a top-class event, not unreminiscent of the start of the Juddmonte International, with the runners well strung out from a very early stage despite the gallop (as in the International) not being particularly strong with a finishing speed that comes in at 106.8% from 400m out if the finishing sectionals and race distance are taken at face value (with the rail being out 8m in the straight and 4m round the bends it seems more likely to me the actual race distance was further than the official 2400m).

French Oaks winner and unlucky Nassau third Sparkling Plenty suffered most in the ragtag start and she came home quickest of all from 600m out from an impossible position on a track that has been favouring those up with the pace since racing resumed in at the start of this month.

That said, the only horse that ran a faster last 600m than Sparking Plenty was the runner-up Aventure, the horse I put forward in this column last week and who briefly hit the front inside the last 200m after letting Bluestocking get first run on her in the straight only to find Bluestocking (who ran the fastest last 200m) getting up again with around 100m to go.

The first three – Emily Upjohn was third – all ran their best races of the year while back in fifth Opera Singer looked a non stayer and was fortunate to confirm Nassau form with Sparkling Plenty. If they turn up in the Arc, Bluestocking and Aventure will both have fair chances in an open year while Emily Upjohn, Opera Singer and particularly Sparkling Plenty will all be better off heading for the Prix de l’Opera, a race that has often proved a happy hunting ground for Vermeille contestants.

Hard to make case for Continuous

The Prix Foy ended up as the second fastest (or, I should really say, the second slowest) of the Arc trails despite being contested at the slowest pace of all which wasn’t entirely unsurprising given there wasn’t any obvious front runner in the field besides which 2023 St Leger winner Continuous was ridden by someone (Christophe Soumillon) other than Ryan Moore for the first time.

As things turned out Soumillon tried to make the best of an unfamiliar hand but as things turned out it should hardly be surprising that Iresine, who I put forward as overpriced last week at 4/1, should have had too much boot for him being a recent 2100m G1 Prix Ganay winner. Sectional upgrades suggest that runner-up Zarir is worth crediting with an extra 1lb-2lb, but Iresine, who has a cracking record at Longchamp and just didn’t look the same horse on a rare try left-handed in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud the time before, never looked unduly troubled and would surely have pulled out more.

It’s hard to see Continuous (fifth in 2023) being a player in the Arc after this, even if he is as good as he was last year, and he looks ready for a step back up in trip, while 2023 Arc eighth Feed The Flame has gone the wrong way and stopped very quickly in first-time headgear. Presumably he’ll be retired now.

Can Look De Vega bounce back

At the overnight stage it had also looked hard to fathom where the pace might come from in the Prix Niel and even harder once of the German raiders was pulled out leaving just five runners.

As it turned out, the French Derby winner Look De Vega was sent on by his rider Ronan Thomas on his first run since that Chantilly success but didn’t go hard, reaching the 1000m marker around three seconds or 15 lengths slower than the leader in the Vermeille but still around 0.7 seconds or three-and-a-half lengths faster than Continuous got there in the Foy.

In light of his commanding victory in the French Derby, where he had Sosie back in third and galloped out strongly to the line, each of Look De Vega’s final three 200m sections were rather underwhelming; indeed, he ran none of them better than joint fourth fastest and both his last two sections were slower than those posted by all the others including Ambiente Friendly who never threatened to get out of last place.

Whether you think Sosie deserves to be favourite for the Arc after this depends upon how you view Look de Vega. Reports on the France Galop X feed in the two weeks preceding the race had connections underlining he was only 80% fit but if you were already on him for the Arc (and he has drifted since) you’d have been disappointed even so by his tame finish.

A defeat in a trial by a horse he had beaten comprehensively in the French Derby three months earlier isn’t immediate confirmation that he deserves to be rated below that horse – and Timeform still have Look de Vega ahead of Sosie - but he needs to go out now and prove all the ability he showed at Chantilly is still there. Runner-up Delius ran well but for the second race in succession let Sosie get first run on him.

Monteille looked unlucky loser

The other two races on the card, the Prix du Pin over 1400m and the Prix du Petit Couvert over 1000m went to Topgear and Pradaro respectively.

According to the tracking data (on the Nouvelle Piste this time and not the Grande Piste that the three Arc trials were run on) the finishing speed in the Pin was just 101% from 400m which meant the winner ended up with a bigger upgrade than the runner-up Ten Bob Tony and the third Dark Trooper.

In all honesty, that seemed rather at odds with visuals which suggested the winner had an easy time in front while the third and fourth (Exxtra) were both set a lot to do with Dark Trooper in particular having to sit and suffer for the best part of 200m in the short straight before flying home.

The Couvert turned into a typical Longchamp straight 1000m dash with plenty of crowding toward the far rail which the surprise winner Pradaro found himself hard up against while plenty of the rivals found themselves marooned in the middle of the track or stuck in a pocket on the rail.

British raiders Electric Storm, Rogue Lightning and No Half measures were all just below their best for various reasons and if there was an unlucky horse in the race it was the home-trained Monteille who had nowhere to go with her rider sitting motionless for the best part of 300m and would surely have won by a couple of lengths with a clear run.

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