Can the Arc’s return to Longchamp get Fabre back on track?

Channel 4 viewers had a rare treat one August Sunday in 1989 when their cameras were sent to cover the Prix Jacques le Marois at Deauville. Then, as now, the only French racing we normally got to see on television was the Arc meeting. As usual there was no shortage of British interest in the top French mile race of the season, but the one to beat was the crack French three-year-old Polish Precedent. He’d been hugely progressive since getting off the mark on his reappearance in the spring and had run up a five-timer beforehand. He duly made it six with an impressive win in the Jacques le Marois, which meant a somewhat daunting task for Channel 4’s French correspondent for the day, namely interviewing winning trainer Andre Fabre.

‘This horse is incredible’ gushed the presenter, referring to the progress the colt had made. ‘He started off winning a maiden, and now he’s won a Group 1!’ Not one to suffer fools gladly, Monsieur Fabre’s terse reply was simply ‘They all start off winning a maiden!’

Ever courteous, though, when interviewed in Britain (Fabre rarely communicates with the French media, on the other hand), there was magnanimity in the trainer’s response – he’s the son of a diplomat, after all - after saddling Pour Moi to win the 2011 Derby, when asked how he felt about beating the Queen, whose Carlton House finished a close third as favourite. ‘It is a race between horses, not between persons, otherwise I would have finished far behind Her Majesty.’  

Her Majesty the Queen's Derby favourite Carlton House (black cap) finishes 3rd to Andre Fabre's POUR MOI in 2011. pic.twitter.com/LTBR9i1bSc

— Chris (@cmoreton99) 14 May 2017

Fabre had long sought an Epsom Derby winner, and three years later he completed a full set of British classic winners when Miss France won the 1000 Guineas. The stable’s runners are always worth respecting when sent across the Channel, and Fabre struck again just last month when Plumatic won the Sovereign Stakes at Salisbury. Incidentally, a Fabre runner in deepest Wiltshire prompted one newspaper tipster to research whether this was a first. The investigation allegedly threw up some surprising, if not downright bizarre, results: ‘I looked to see if this was the great man’s first runner there but not only has he had a runner at Salisbury, he’s had runners at Catterick, Musselburgh, Carlisle, Redcar and Southwell, so he’s better travelled than I imagined.’  

Fabre, of course, has much bigger fish to fry at home than bother with 0-65 handicaps on the fibresand. He’s well on his way to becoming champion trainer in France for the twenty-ninth time this year, an almost unbroken reign during which he has trained the winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe a record seven times.

The first of those winners was Trempolino in 1987, a colt who’d been beaten a head in the Prix du Jockey Club and earned his place in the Arc field after winning the Prix Niel over course and distance three weeks earlier. At 20/1, Trempolino pulled off a shock win over a field that included Reference Point, winner of the Derby, King George and St Leger, and his Jockey Club conqueror Natroun, as well as top-class older rivals Mtoto and Triptych. On very firm ground, Trempolino showed a tremendous turn of foot, lowering Dancing Brave’s record set a year earlier by more than a second.

1987 Arc de Triomphe winner Trempolino has died.
Andre Fabre paid tribute, saying "His great strength was his acceleration and he loved fast ground. He had an exceptional jockey in Pat Eddery. I miss Trempolino and I miss Pat Eddery."
Here's his Arc victory again. pic.twitter.com/gQdedxhHWG

— Racing UK (@racing_uk) 21 March 2018

Next came Subotica in 1992, the only older horse among Fabre’s Arc winners. He too had won the Prix Niel the year before but was denied a chance to run in that year’s Arc when developing a rash. He was beaten in his Arc trial, the Prix Foy, a year later but came out on top in a muddling Arc when getting the better of Oaks and St Leger winner User Friendly by a neck after a tremendous duel.

Sheikh Mohammed’s Carnegie was one of no fewer than five Arc runners saddled by Fabre in 1994. Carnegie lacked experience but certainly had the pedigree for the race (by Sadler’s Wells out of the 1980 winner Detroit) and followed up a striking win in the Niel by coming out on top in a blanket finish from several older horses.

Peintre Celebre had already given Fabre (and the colt’s owner Daniel Wildenstein) a first win in the Prix du Jockey Club in 1997, and became the pick of his trainer’s Arc winners, smashing Trempolino’s record under firm conditions again when beating the top-class five-year-old Pilsudski by five lengths. Peintre Celebre had the now customary prep in the Niel but managed to get beaten in a race that should have been a formality after failing to get a clear run in time. Fabre’s phlegmatic comment afterwards that ‘this is the Prix Niel, not the Arc’ revealed plenty about his approach to the Arc trials as just that, mere rehearsals for the big race.

Olivier Peslier's flying dismount from Peintre Célèbre after the colts brilliant success in 1997 Arc de Triomphe pic.twitter.com/f3JX2iKA7a

— ROBERT KING (@LONGCHAMP86) 21 November 2014

Peintre Celebre was a tough act to follow and, although Sagamix maintained an unbeaten record when winning the Arc twelve months later (after landing the Niel), his lower-key success in 1998 was greeted with ‘the sort of noise you get after a pianist’s effort in a hotel bar’ as one report memorably put it.

More exciting was Hurricane Run’s victory in 2005 when he quickened impressively to win going away from top stayer Westerner and the previous year’s winner Bago, having won the Irish Derby (and Niel) beforehand. Hurricane Run made his own bid for a repeat win in 2006 (having added the King George to his record), lining up with his stable-companion the Breeders’ Cup Turf and Coronation Cup winner Shirocco who had beaten him in their trial, the Prix Foy. Most attention was focussed instead on Japanese star Deep Impact but it was Fabre’s apparent third string, three-year-old Rail Link, who upstaged all of them. He’d won the Grand Prix de Paris in the summer before the obligatory (and successful) warm-up in the Niel.

But it’s now a dozen years since Fabre’s last Arc win with Rail Link, so has he lost his touch when it comes to Europe’s richest race? Not at all. While an eighth win has so far eluded him, he has gone close in five of the last six runnings, the exception being the 2016 renewal in which Aidan O’Brien saddled the first three home. Masterstroke, Intello, Flintshire (twice), New Bay and Cloth of Stars have all been placed since 2012, Flintshire and Cloth of Stars having the misfortune to come up against those exceptional fillies Treve and Enable.

Hopes of keeping this year’s Arc at home for the first time since Treve’s second win in 2014 seemed to lie principally with Prix du Jockey Club winner Study of Man, though two defeats since his Chantilly victory give the Pascal Bary-trained colt an unconvincing profile for a potential Arc winner. But thanks to Fabre, prospects of a French victory are looking a little rosier after the performances of his runners in the Arc trials, which, as we’ve seen, have played such a crucial role in the preparations of all his past winners.

Four-year-old filly Kitesurf gained a narrow win in the Prix Vermeille and while, unusually, Fabre had no runners in the Niel this year, his trio dominated the Foy for older horses in which Waldgeist led home the Godolphin pair Talismanic and Cloth of Stars.

Waldgeist drew a blank at three when he suffered a narrow defeat in the Jockey Club, finished fourth in the Irish Derby and was turned over at odds on in the Cumberland Lodge. But he’s had no trouble getting his head in front this term as the Foy was his fourth success in a row and a career-best effort. It was certainly a more convincing performance with the Arc in mind than his win in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud in July when he’d beaten Coronet by just a nose, the runner-up a smart filly but not in the same league as her Arc-bound stable-companions Enable and Cracksman.

Waldgeist carries the red and green colours of his German part-owners Gestut Ammerland, as did Borgia who was trained in Germany when she finished third in Peintre Celebre’s Arc (she later joined Fabre for whom she won the Hong Kong Vase). Hurricane Run was bred by the same stud, and he too began his career in their colours, though had passed into Coolmore ownership by the time of his Arc victory.

Impressive! Waldgeist storms to victory in the Group 2 Prix Foy at @paris_longchamp... pic.twitter.com/rnZEFzKao8

— At The Races (@AtTheRaces) 16 September 2018

Don’t write off Talismanic or Cloth of Stars after their defeats in the Foy, though. Fabre has clearly had an autumn programme in mind for both of them after trips to Dubai early in the year. Cloth of Stars went off the boil mid-season, but his third in the Foy suggested an imminent return to form. If he can improve by a similar amount as he did between last year’s Foy and Arc he’ll be right in the mix again. Talismanic returned to action with a Group 3 success at Deauville last month and took a big step forward on that form in the Foy where he quickened smartly into the lead over a furlong out before Waldgeist took his measure inside the last. It’s worth remembering that he too built on his defeat in last year’s Foy, missing the Arc but recording a career-best when winning the Breeders’ Cup Turf.

Finally, there’s a unique set of circumstances this year, following Longchamp’s closure for two seasons and Chantilly’s temporary hosting of the Arc, which might just give horses who contested an Arc trial an extra edge. Most of the other leading Arc contenders lack any experience around Longchamp, and that includes hot favourite Enable despite being last year’s winner!

Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe Leading Trainer (7wins) with:
Trempolino,Subotica,Carnegie,Peintre Celebre,Sagamix,Hurricane Run,Rail Link pic.twitter.com/pK091D8Zgb

— We Horse Racing (@wehorseracing) 2 October 2016