Prix Vermeille (Group 1)

THE Prix Vermeille was a puzzling race. It had looked like being a real test of Snowfall’s Arc credentials only for Raabihah, Alpinista and the ill-fated Wonderful Tonight to drop out in the days beforehand leaving O’Brien with three of its seven combatants.

Sure, the impressive three-time Oaks winner was up against the first three from the Prix de Diane, but her unbeaten 2021 campaign brooked little argument and, with jockey Frankie Dettori usually so skilled around ParisLongchamp’s right hand bends already having got to know the Deep Impact filly during her Epsom classic romp, defeat was unthinkable.

And yet the 1/5 favourite did get turned over.

Snowfall sat in fifth place as her stablemate, La Joconde, set a medium gallop with Teona following in second while racing rather keenly (but not pulling her head off like she had in the Musidora) and Snowfall a fair way back in fifth.

Joan Of Arc moved up into second shortly after halfway but she backed out of it alarmingly quickly early in the home straight, at which point it was already becoming apparent that this would be no cakewalk for Snowfall, who has been set plenty to do.

Teona swept past La Joconde approaching the furlong pole and a labouring Snowfall never looked like reeling her in – in fact she only struggled past La Joconde in the dying strides to take second, finishing half a length in front of her stablemate who had been almost seven lengths behind her at York over the same trip three and a half weeks previously.

Too far back

Dettori admitted afterwards that he had got too far back, though that hardly explains the eclipse of a filly who had previously been so far ahead of her generation.

His other observation, that Hollie Doyle might have gone rather quicker on La Joconde, did feel like he was clutching at straws. The pace was far from frantic, that’s a fact, but the sectional times showed that it was the equivalent of three lengths quicker than either of the other trial races, and Snowfall has looked tactically versatile in the past.

Normally a staying-on second is a perfectly acceptable performance in a trial but, given the weakness of the opposition, there was no way of sugar-coating this defeat.

Below par

Many of her trainer’s charges have seemed a bit below par of late and a couple of different form lines suggest that she was at least half a dozen pounds below her best here.

Exactly where this leaves Teona in the Arc pecking order is anyone’s guess, though at least the big one is likely to be her next target, weather permitting.

A daughter of Sea The Stars, she is also entered in the Prix de l’Opera (over shorter) and the Prix Royallieu (over farther), but her trainer, Roger Varian, said afterwards: “I think that a mile and a half is her trip.

“I don’t think she appreciates soft ground – when she ran on it in the Oaks it took a long time for her to recover – but we’ve always held her in high regard.”

Varian trained her late-maturing dam, Ambivalent, transforming her from a 72-rated handicapper at the start of her four-year-old season to a Curragh Group 1 winner the following summer and a mare capable of being placed in two of the world’s top races at the age of six.

“You would expect Teona to get better with age and I hope that she might hang around for a year or two yet,” concluded the Newmarket handler.