Inspiral going for unique Jacques Le Marois treble

Inspiral joined a select group of top milers when winning Deauville’s Prix Jacques Le Marois for the second time last year and bids to make history as the race’s first triple winner under Ryan Moore this afternoon. Her jockey is significant, as he’ll become only the fourth different rider to partner the five-year-old daughter of Frankel. With the exception of her two-year-old debut when winning a Newmarket maiden under Rab Havlin, Inspiral had been ridden by Frankie Dettori in all her other races until this year. Besides the last two Jacques Le Marois, that was a partnership which enjoyed further top-level success in the Fillies’ Mile at two, the Coronation Stakes at three and the Sun Chariot Stakes and Breeders’ Cup Filly And Mare Turf last year.

Moore, who has never won the Jacques Le Marois, therefore has a tough act to follow, just like Kieran Shoemark who has been on board Inspiral for both her races so far this year. Both times this season Inspiral has fallen well short of her high-class best, finishing a never-dangerous fourth when favourite to make a winning reappearance in the Lockinge Stakes at Newbury and never threatening either when sixth in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot. But it’s worth noting that Inspiral has gone into the last two Jacques Le Marois on the back of disappointing performances before bouncing back over Deauville’s flat straight mile.

As a three-year-old she’d suffered a shock defeat at 1/7 in the Falmouth Stakes beforehand but had her Newmarket conqueror Prosperous Voyage back in sixth when seeing off three-year-old colts Light Infantry and Erevann in a finish of necks at Deauville, with 2000 Guineas winner Coroebus also among her victims. Like this year, Inspiral had been beaten in both her first two starts last season, going down by a neck in the Queen Anne Stakes and then getting bogged down in the Goodwood mud in the Sussex Stakes before returning to her best with a comfortable success on the Normandy coast just eleven days later.

Among Inspiral’s beaten rivals in last year’s race were the pair who’d run her close in 2022 and Triple Time who’d beaten her in the Queen Anne, but it was Big Rock who got closest to her, leading until a furlong out and keeping on to be beaten a length and a quarter. Big Rock is another who’s had a disappointing season so far, finishing well adrift of Inspiral in the Lockinge and running even worse in the Queen Anne. He too will have a different jockey (and trainer, in his case) from twelve months ago, regular rider Aurelien Lemaitre, who guided him to a six-length win in last autumn’s Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, having been replaced by Christophe Soumillon at Royal Ascot and who himself makes way for Cristian Demuro here.

Inspiral’s double in the last two Jacques Le Marois came hot on the heels of Palace Pier who achieved the same double for the Gosden stable in 2020 and 2021. John Gosden’s last three wins in the race have been as joint-licence holder with son Thady but he has won the race five times in all, having first been successful ten years ago with Kingman. James Doyle partnered Kingman on that occasion and has the ride on Haatem for Richard Hannon here, while Kingman is the sire of another of Inspiral’s rivals Quddwah.

But the record for the most wins by a trainer in the Jacques Le Marois with seven is held jointly by France’s two greatest trainers of the last fifty years or so, Francois Boutin and Andre Fabre. Boutin, who was champion trainer in France seven times in the 1970s and 1980s, died in 1995 and is commemorated in the name of the Group 3 two-year-old contest which opens the Jacques Le Marois card. Among his Jacques Le Marois winners was Miesque, the only other filly besides Inspiral to have won the race twice. She was also the race’s first dual winner, achieving her double in 1987/88. Incidentally, Miesque’s sire Nureyev, he too trained by Boutin, is also remembered with a listed race named after him on the card.

The top-class Miesque was an easy three-length winner of her first Jacques Le Marois when her victims included the English and Irish 2000 Guineas winner Don’t Forget Me. Miesque, who’d been the best of her age and sex in France at two, had herself completed the English and French 1000 Guineas double in the spring and went on to win the Prix du Moulin and Breeders’ Cup Mile later at three. But she proved better still at four, taking her total of Group/Grade 1 wins to ten, winning the Prix d’Ispahan in addition to repeat victories at both Deauville and the Breeders’ Cup. In her second Jacques Le Marois she beat a much stronger field than twelve months earlier and did so brilliantly, storming past the Sussex Stakes winner Warning to win going away by what looked slightly more than the official margin of a length, with Fabre’s July Cup winner Soviet Star back in fourth. Much like Inspiral, Miesque had an impressive turn of foot and was best served by a sound surface.

Miesque’s two wins came just after her breeder and owner Stavros Niarchos began sponsoring the Jacques Le Marois through his stud Haras de Fresnay-Le-Buffard who remain the race sponsors to this day. Miesque was Niarchos’ first Jacques Le Marois winner and he was to win it five times in total but the Niarchos Family colours have been carried to victory another four times since, including by the race’s other dual winner Spinning World, successful in 1996 (months after Niarchos died) and 1997.

Besides being a dual winner herself, Miesque has left a remarkable legacy in the Jacques Le Marois. Her daughter East of The Moon won it in 1994, providing Boutin and Niarchos with their respective final winners of the race, while the Niarchos Family’s latest winner, Alpha Centauri, successful in 2018 for Jessica Harrington, is in turn a granddaughter of East of The Moon.

Miesque and Inspiral might stand alone as the only female dual Jacques Le Marois winners in its more than hundred-year history but another ‘Queen of Deauville’ deserves a mention here too. Trained by Freddie Head who had been Miesque’s jockey, Goldikova was the last mare before Integral to contest the Jacques Le Marois three times. Goldikova had already won the first of what were to be her three Breeders’ Cup Miles by the time she first contested the Jacques Le Marois as a four-year-old in 2009. Sent off odds on after wins earlier in the summer in the Falmouth Stakes and Prix Rothschild (a race she’d already won at three), Goldikova bettered even Miesque’s efforts, pulling clear of the British-trained four-year-old colts Aqlaam and Virtual to win by six lengths and five, the latter trained by John Gosden for Inspiral’s owners Cheveley Park Stud.

The Prix Rothschild for fillies and mares is run a fortnight before the Jacques Le Marois over the same course and distance and Goldikova won it again aged five and six but in both those years she found one too good in her bids to win another Jacques Le Marois. In 2010 she was beaten by the 2000 Guineas winner Makfi on soft ground – she too needed firmer conditions for her excellent turn of foot to be seen to best effect. A year later, and with conditions on the soft side, she again had to settle for second behind a member of the classic generation, with Immortal Verse following up her Coronation Stakes victory and outpointing Goldikova in the closing stages to win by a length. Head did win another Jacques Le Marois with another mare, Moonlight Cloud, and she too had a formidable all-round record at Deauville, also winning three editions of the Prix Maurice de Gheest.

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