Sea of Class: Racehorses essay

The latest edition of Europe’s richest and most prestigious race, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, was the seventieth since its value was raised five-fold in 1949 to make it an event of truly global importance. The top fillies are usually up against it taking on the top colts receiving only the standard 3 lb sex allowance, but ten three-year-old fillies have won the Arc in those seventy runnings. Sea of Class was unlucky not to become the eleventh, making up ground hand over fist but arriving on the scene just too late.

She beat the colts in a field that brought together most of the best middle-distance horses in Europe, but the phenomenal four-year-old filly Enable just scrambled home from Sea of Class by a short neck, gaining her second victory in the race. Enable had a truncated campaign in the latest season – not seen out until September because of injury – and was probably only at ninety-five per cent on Arc day, but, apart from her, Sea of Class is as good as any middle-distance filly or mare trained in Britain and Ireland for over twenty years – since Bosra Sham who raced only ten times because of foot problems, enjoying three seasons at the top in the ’nineties after which her trainer Henry Cecil maintained, if pressed, that she was the best horse he had trained – until Frankel came along.

Sea of Class herself has had only one season, or more accurately half a season, at the top so far and, after being unraced at two (she was a late-May foal), the Arc was only her sixth race. She burst on to the Group 1 scene in July when winning the Irish Oaks on her first venture above listed class, and followed up when beating older fillies in the Yorkshire Oaks, impressive performances that put her among the leading challengers to hot favourite Enable at Longchamp where she started joint second favourite with the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud winner Waldgeist in a field of nineteen.

How impressive was that?

SEA OF CLASS is all class and absolutely romps them in the 2018 @DarleyStallions Yorkshire Oaks under @the_doyler!

Next stop Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe? 🤔

📽️ @itvracing
pic.twitter.com/F3b6HY9EjV

— Timeform Live (@TimeformLive) August 23, 2018

While it can never be right to attribute any horse’s defeat simply to the draw in a mile and a half race, it is true that any horse drawn low over that distance in a big field on the sweeping track at Longchamp has a slightly harder task than one drawn nearer the inside rail, especially if waiting tactics are being adopted, as they were with Sea of Class. The prominently-ridden Enable quickly took up her usual handy position, breaking well from stall six, while Sea of Class, drawn fifteen, was seemingly ridden to orders (her trainer reportedly thought she had `gone too soon’ at York) and was immediately taken across and dropped in behind the rest on the inside rail.

Still in the last two early in the home straight, where she had more than a dozen lengths to make up, Sea of Class enjoyed a near-dream run as she made her challenge, her jockey largely plotting the shortest route through the middle of the field, switching her but having to make only one involuntary minor manoeuvre, as Sea of Class passed the weakening outsider Tiberian. Sea of Class was eating up the ground in the closing stages, the speed of her finishing effort accentuated by the fact that Enable, sent to the front over a furlong out (later in the race than the previous year), was out on her feet in the last fifty yards. The line came just in time for the faltering Enable. In the words of William Haggas, trainer of Sea of Class, `We needed another five metres, it was just unfortunate.’

Sea of Class was set a huge task and nearly pulled it off, and there was plenty of discussion afterwards about the ride given to her by James Doyle (who shed 3 lb off his day-to-day minimum riding weight to do 8-9 in the Arc). Sea of Class was, without much doubt, the best horse in the Arc field on the day and lost because she simply had too much ground to make up, but, given the waiting tactics decided on, it was hard to fault the decision to avoid being caught three or four wide in mid-division and instead to cross over and drop her in close to the rail, relaxed and out of trouble (her relative racing inexperience probably another factor in choosing the tactics). Doyle saved further valuable ground by steering Sea of Class through the middle of the field in the straight, as opposed to switching her round horses to challenge on the wide outside.

WOW! WHAT A RACE!

ENABLE becomes the first British trained dual winner of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe!

Massive run from Sea of Class in 2nd coming from where she did!

📽️ @AtTheRaces

pic.twitter.com/aYQfoh632N

— Timeform Live (@TimeformLive) October 7, 2018

Given the chance to ride the race again, Doyle might have changed one or two things – perhaps not settling Sea of Class quite so far back or beginning her finishing run a little earlier – but who is to say she would have enjoyed the same virtually uninterrupted run under difference circumstances? How much extra energy would have been expended – with the attendant risk of being bumped or barged – had Doyle tried to take up a position in mid-field over the first furlong or so when most of the runners were going hard, trying to do exactly the same? What if, in doing so, Sea of Class had found herself caught three or four wide and ended up covering more ground? They are imponderables that Doyle’s armchair critics needed to consider before taking to social media to blame his tactics for the defeat.

When the draw became known, apparently, William Haggas’ wife Maureen had telephoned her father Lester Piggott for advice. `Don’t change the tactics, and pray’ was his reply. The prayers weren’t answered in the Arc, in the face, it should be said, of a `divine’ ride by Dettori on Enable who blew up and would have been beaten if her rider had sent her for home any sooner.