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Top milers Notable Speech and Charyn clash in Prix du Moulin at Longchamp
John Ingles looks at how two of the season's best milers measure up in their meeting at Longchamp on Sunday.
Horse profiles
Unraced at two, Notable Speech made rapid strides in the early months of the year, completing a hat-trick on the all-weather at Kempton and then, despite that unorthodox profile, looking a potentially top-drawer miler when winning the 2000 Guineas from Rosallion and Haatem with a sharp turn of foot.
But when sent off the short-priced favourite to keep his unbeaten record in the St James’s Palace Stakes, Notable Speech ran a lacklustre race in beating only one home.
With the St James’s Palace winner Rosallion a late defector from the Sussex Stakes, Notable Speech confirmed himself a high-class miler when back to winning form at Goodwood, though with the St James’s Palace runner-up Henry Longfellow disappointing this time, he was chased home by the very smart older pair Maljoom and Facteur Cheval, the latter third in last year’s Moulin. Raced only three times on turf, on either good or good to firm ground, Notable Speech travels strongly held up and has a fine turn of foot.
WATCH: Notable Speech wins the Qatar Sussex Stakes at Goodwood
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Charyn is no stranger to winning in France as he ended his two-year-old season with victory in the Criterium de Maisons-Laffitte at Chantilly. At three, he developed into a smart colt but failed to win, coming up short at the highest level, including in the same three races which Notable Speech has contested on turf this the year, the 2000 Guineas (eighth), St James’s Palace (best effort when third at 33/1) and Sussex (third again).
But this season, Charyn has developed into a high-class four-year-old with just one defeat, an excusable one at that, in five starts.
After early-season wins at Doncaster and Sandown, he ran well back in Group 1 company to finish second in the Lockinge Stakes to Audience who slipped his field. Charyn duly turned the tables on that rival in the Queen Anne Stakes when registering his first Group 1 victory and followed that Royal Ascot win with a still better effort in the Jacques Le Marois where he had Inspiral, bidding to win it for the third year running, back in third.
Versatile when it comes to ground, Charyn, like Notable Speech, travels strongly and is waited with, though he was ridden a bit more prominently last time.
WATCH: Charyn wins the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot
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Connections
Neither the trainers nor the riders of either Notable Speech or Charyn have been successful in the Prix du Moulin before, though Notable Speech’s owners Godolphin have won it three times.
Saeed bin Suroor trained two of those winners, Slickly in 2001 and Librettist in 2006, while the most recent Godolphin winner was Ribchester in 2017, trained by Richard Fahey.
Age
There’s a fairly even split this century between the age groups, with three-year-olds having won 11 editions of the Moulin compared with 13 won by four-year-olds and upwards.
Sussex Stakes winners in the Moulin
Only one Sussex Stakes winner this century has gone on to win the Prix du Moulin in the same season. That was another three-year-old, Rock of Gibraltar, in 2002, he too also a 2000 Guineas winner like Notable Speech, having also won the Irish 2000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes that season.
That year’s Moulin also featured a clash between a three-year-old Sussex winner and a four-year-old Jacques Le Marois winner, with Deauville winner Banks Hill running Rock of Gibraltar to half a length in second.
Since Rock of Gibraltar, only four other Sussex winners have contested the same year’s Moulin. Ramonti, second at Longchamp in 2007, fared best of those, while the last to attempt the double was the 2018 Sussex winner Lightning Spear who was fifth at Longchamp.
The only horse since Rock of Gibraltar to win both races was Baaeed, winner of the Moulin at three and the Sussex at four.
Prix Jacques Le Marois winners in the Moulin
It's a quirk of the French racing calendar that the country's two biggest all-age mile contests are usually run just three weeks apart. The mile courses at the two tracks are very different though, with Deauville’s flat, straight mile contrasting with Longchamp where much of the race is on the turn and features a descent.
The Jacques Le Marois-Moulin double has only been completed once in the same year this century, in 2006, and it wasn’t a French-trained horse who accomplished it. The Saeed bin Suroor-trained four-year-old Librettist was a neck winner over Manduro at Deauville and had the same rival back in third when following up at Longchamp three weeks later.
He was the first since Spinning World in 1997 to win both races in the same season, though Goldikova, Excelebration, Moonlight Cloud and Ribchester have all won both races in different seasons more recently. Irish four-year-old Romanised couldn’t have gone much closer to emulating Librettist, winning the Jacques Le Marois but going down by just a nose in the Moulin.
Prix Du Moulin De Longchamp odds
Paddy Power: 6/4 Notable Speech, 13/8 Charyn, 5/1 Henry Longfellow, 12 Tribalist, 14 Caramelito, 20 Big Rock, 25 Ramadan, 33 Kelina, Supercooled.
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