CONFIDENT? Over-confident? Perfectly judged? Artistic? Depending on your point of view, all words which could be used to describe Gerald Mosse’s ride aboard Skalleti in last Sunday’s ParisLongchamp feature, the Group 2 Prix d’Harcourt.

The facts are that Skalleti scored by a length, easing down, and what’s the point of Mosse having almost 40 years worth of race-riding experience if he’s not capable of keeping his cool when partnering a long odds-on favourite?

Nevertheless, if you had backed the 2/5 chance you might have been questioning Monsieur Mosse’s sanity when, having dropped the Jerome Reynier-trained grey out the back of the field, he decided to keep to the inside with little more than two furlongs to run, all seven opponents in front of him and some eight lengths to make up on his unconsidered stablemate, the front-running Monty.

Skalleti then managed to find his way to the outside without breaking stride and, hey presto, a comfortable success was achieved.

Triumphs

Reynier has now engineered four Group 2 triumphs from the gelded son of Kendargent, yet afterwards claimed lack of concern about achieving a first victory at the top level. “Everyone’s getting in a stew about him not having won a Group 1 but if that doesn’t happen and he continues to produce performances like this, it’s fine by me,” he said.

“We weren’t really planning to run him today but he was in such good condition that we thought we would give it a go,” he said.

“The Prix Ganay [over an extra half furlong on May 2nd] is the logical next step but his old limbs need a bit of cut in the ground, so he will only go there if it’s not too quick.”

Mosse brushed off suggestions that he had sat a long way out of his ground, saying: “I knew I had the best horse and I didn’t want him to give him a hard race.”

It remains to be seen if he will retain the ride in the Ganay – regular partner Pierre-Charles Boudot chose to ride the runner-up, Mare Australis, for his main employer, Andre Fabre, but could be back aboard next month.