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Baaeed gained his first Group 1 win in the Prix du Moulin.

Five top-class Prix du Moulin winners

By John Ingles

10:42 · FRI September 06, 2024

Ahead of Sunday's clash between Notable Speech and Charyn in the Prix du Moulin, we look at five of the best winners of Longchamp's Group 1 mile.

*Timeform ratings quoted are the horses’ career best

MIESQUE, 1987 (Timeform rating 133)

Three-year-old filly Miesque was named Timeform’s champion miler of 1987 when the Prix du Moulin was one of her five top-level wins over that distance. Her only defeat beforehand that season had come over the longer trip of the Prix de Diane where she finished second to another top-class filly Indian Skimmer

The best of her age and sex in France at two, Miesque then became the first filly for forty years to complete the double of the 1000 Guineas and Poule d’Essai des Pouliches. Back at a mile after her Diane defeat, she then completed another notable double, following up an easy win in the Prix Jacques Le Marois with victory in the Prix du Moulin. Like this year’s race, the 1987 Moulin was a clash between the winners of the Jacques Le Marois and the Sussex Stakes, but Soviet Star, the French three-year-old colt who’d won at Goodwood, was put firmly in his place by Miesque at Longchamp who quickened in great style to beat him two and a half lengths.

No horse has won the Moulin twice but Miesque went very close, going down by a head as Soviet Star got his revenge a year later. Miesque’s first foal, Kingmambo, won the Moulin six years after his dam.

Miesque wins her first Breeders' Cup Mile in 1987

Miesque won the Prix du Moulin on the way to her first Breeders' Cup Mile in 1987

POLISH PRECEDENT, 1989 (131)

Soviet Star was one of three Moulin winners in four years in Sheikh Mohammed’s colours in the late 1980s. The others were the Sir Michael Stoute-trained filly Sonic Lady and three-year-old colt Polish Precedent trained, like Soviet Star, by Andre Fabre who has trained a record seven winners of the race in total.

Polish Precedent established himself as much the best miler in France in 1989 where he was unbeaten in seven races that season on his home turf, rising through the ranks from a maiden success in the spring to completing the Jacques Le Marois-Moulin double as Miesque had done two years earlier.

Although he was an emphatic winner of the Jacques Le Marois, Polish Precedent still had nine rivals in the Moulin, four of whom he’d beaten at Deauville. He won by the same margin but, if anything, was even more impressive than at Deauville, quickening clear to win unchallenged from Squill, who’d been sixth in the Jacques Le Marois and who was just ahead of the British-trained sprinter Cadeaux Genereux who trying a mile for the first time.

Polish Precedent didn’t meet his match until coming up against the then-unbeaten Sussex Stakes winner Zilzal in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes on his next and final start.

Polish Precedent's trainer Andre Fabre has won the Moulin a record seven times

ROCK OF GIBRALTAR, 2002 (133)

Like this year’s race, the 2002 Moulin pitched the winner of the 2000 Guineas and Sussex Stakes against a year-older winner of the Jacques Le Marois. It was the three-year-old who came out on top, with Rock of Gibraltar making some history at Longchamp as the Moulin was his seventh successive victory in a Group 1 (going one better than Mill Reef).

That sequence had begun at two in the Grand Criterium and Dewhurst, and besides the 2000 Guineas and Sussex, Rock of Gibraltar had also won the Irish 2000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes on his way to the Moulin. Aidan O’Brien’s runners were under a cloud, following an outbreak of coughing, when Rock of Gibraltar was sent to Longchamp, but he started the odds-on favourite in a field of seven where the Jacques Le Marois winner Banks Hill, Europe’s best filly, was his chief rival.

Rock of Gibraltar looked to have plenty to do early in the straight but he pounced in typical style to win readily by half a length from Banks Hill with the Irish 1000 Guineas winner Gossamer in third. With the field finishing in something of a heap, the bare form of the 2002 renewal was nothing to write home about but Rock of Gibraltar remains the only Sussex Stakes winner this century to have followed up in the Moulin.

Rock Of Gibraltar pictured winning the Dewhurst

Rock of Gibraltar won seven Group 1s in a row

GOLDIKOVA, 2008 (133)

Miesque’s jockey Freddie Head also won two Breeders’ Cup Miles with her but in his subsequent training career handled an equally top-class mare who would win the same race three times.

In all, Goldikova won 14 Group/Grade 1 races, a European record, though her victory as a three-year-old in the Moulin was just the second top-level success of her career and it was the only time she contested the race even though she stayed in training until the age of six.

In 2008, Goldikova was largely in the shadow of fellow three-year-old filly Zarkava who’d beaten her in both the French fillies’ classics and was to end her unbeaten career with victory in the Arc. But with Zarkava stepping up in trip, Goldikova proved hard to beat at a mile.

Her first Group 1 win came against her own sex in the Prix Rothschild at Deauville (a race she’d win four times), so the Moulin was her first big test against male rivals, notably Ballydoyle’s Henrythenavigator who’d won the same four Group 1 contests beforehand as Rock of Gibraltar six years earlier. But the even-money favourite could only finish fourth as Goldikova quickened to lead early in the straight and held on well from another filly, the previous season’s Moulin winner Darjina, by half a length.

Goldikova 2010: Olivier Peslier celebrates the great mare's final Breeders' Cup triumph

Triple Breeders' Cup Mile winner Goldikova gained one of her early Group 1 wins in the Moulin

BAAEED, 2021 (137)

Unlike the above Moulin winners who were all Group 1 winners already, Baaeed went to Longchamp in 2021 facing his biggest test so far in a career that was barely three months old.

He’d made rapid progress over the summer since a debut success in a maiden at Leicester, winning a novice and listed race at Newmarket and the Group 3 Thoroughbred Stakes at Goodwood, all by margins of at least four lengths and impressing as a future Group 1 performer whenever that time came.

His trainer William Haggas had already won the Moulin in 2009 with Aqlaam for Baaeed’s late owner Hamdan Al Maktoum, and Baaeed lined up as the 1/2 favourite against five rivals. In the absence of the two best milers around, Palace Pier and Poetic Flare, who had finished one-two in the Jacques Le Marois, Baaeed didn’t need to improve to keep his unbeaten record, having to work a bit harder than for his previous wins but just needing pushing out to beat the previous season’s Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Order of Australia, who’d been third at Deauville, by a length and a quarter.

The Moulin was to be the first of Baaeed’s six consecutive Group 1 wins, his unbeaten record not falling until his final start in the Champion Stakes the following autumn.

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