Chantilly Sunday

3.00pm Qatar Prix Du Jockey Club (Group 1) (3yo Colts & Fillies) 1m 2f 110y

The Qatar Prix du Jockey Club has produced two superb winners in the shape of Sottsass and Mishriff over the last couple of years and its 2021 renewal seems to have all the right ingredients to suggest that whichever colt passes the post in front will be another top-class performer.

The one proviso worth adding is that this 10-and-a-half-furlong contest has attracted 19 runners, so there has to be a chance that the best horse in the race will get caught up in the almost inevitable scrimmaging early in the home straight. Indeed, it will be surprising if there are not at least a couple of hard-luck stories.

If ever Aidan O’Brien was going to beat his French summer classic hex, then surely now is the time. For he is responsible for two of the three previous Group 1 winners in the field and, remarkably, has more runners in this Derby than he does in the Epsom version 24 hours earlier.

His record in the spring classics at ParisLongchamp is strong, and it’s not even an aversion to Chantilly – who could forget his unprecedented Arc one-two-three à côté du château in 2016?

But he’s never won the Prix de Diane and his record in the Jockey Club is even worse – 41 winless runners and just two placed horses.

Number one

St Mark’s Basilica is clearly his number one candidate having brushed aside three of these opponents in the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and also won the event that is usually Europe’s best two-year-old race, the Dewhurst Stakes.

The one chink in his armour is a lack of stamina in his pedigree – O’Brien knows all too well that his Guineas-winning half-brother, Magna Grecia, was best over a mile and his sire, Siyouni, is more of an influence for speed than stamina.

There are fewer stamina doubts about the other Ballydoyle hope, Van Gogh, given that his dam is the Oaks heroine Imagine.

But he has had only two weeks to get over his exertions when third in the Irish Guineas and (though thunderstorms are a possibility) Chantilly is unlikely to provide the cut in the ground that he relished when landing the Group 1 Criterium International last October.

Should O’Brien come up short yet again, who will take advantage?

Jean-Claude Rouget is the most obvious answer having won this race three times in the last five years. He saddles the only unbeaten colts in the line-up (Cheshire Academy and Saiydabad) yet it his other runner, Makaloun, who makes most appeal.

Defeat

Like fifth-placed Bolshoi Ballet, Makaloun got stuck in the mud while suffering his solitary defeat, when third in the Criterium de Saint-Cloud, and he was reportedly miles off full fitness on his reappearance yet still managed a cosy victory in listed company.

The draw did him no favours, as he has been allotted stall 18, but provided Christophe Soumillon can negotiate a clear passage his credentials are extremely good.

Two-thirds of the three-pronged British challenge is down to John Gosden but both of his charges, Megallan and Derab, have been lumbered with wide draws and neither looks in the same class as their stablemate Mishriff.

So if a cross-Channel raider is to be involved in the finish, maybe it will be Roger Varian’s El Drama, who proved himself over this trip when getting his career back on track with victory in the Dee Stakes – form that has been franked by the subsequent Gallinule Stakes success of the third, Earlswood.

At the prices on offer, perhaps the best bet is an each-way investment at around 20/1 on Policy Of Truth, who plugged on well despite being short of room towards the inside to grab fourth place in the Poulains and looks likely to improve for this step up in trip.

SELECTION: MAKALOUN

Next Best: Policy Of Truth

Rest of the card

British success may be forthcoming in one of the three main supporting races, all Group 2 events worth €130,000, as Charlie Appleby’s Lazuli, who carried a penalty when landing last month’s Palace House Stakes, can follow up in the five furlong Prix du Gros-Chene.

The Arc runner-up, In Swoop, will probably be his usual unimpressive self but still get the job done on unsuitably fast ground in the Grand Prix de Chantilly (12 furlongs), while Pascal Bary’s Tahlie may make it three straight wins by landing the Prix de Sandringham over a mile.