Saint-Cloud Sunday

11.48 Criterium de Saint-Cloud (Group 1) (2yo Colts & Fillies) 1m 2f

The French Group 1 flat season finishes with a bang at Saint-Cloud tomorrow, with a nine-race card on heavy ground, which includes not just the last three top-level contests of the year but three more Group 3 events to make it a bumper finale.

The first of the three big ones, the five-runner Criterium de Saint-Cloud, is an all-overseas affair, which must be very disappointing for Parisian turfistes.

Compared to preceding seasons, this has been a fine campaign for French trainers with regards to successfully defending their top prizes, but this pitiful representation (there is a one-horse home team in the day’s other juvenile Group 1, the Criterium de Saint-Cloud) confirms that the locals have little regard for their closing showpieces, when it comes to the subsequent careers of two-year-olds.

This is a long-running theme: there has not been a domestically-trained winner in any of the last four Criteriums de Saint-Cloud and the last home success in the Criterium International was way back in 2013.

Aidan O’Brien saddles the distant Fillies’ Mile third, Ballet Slippers, who is the first foal of the six-time Group 1 scorer Magical, while there are two British challengers, the Charlie Johnston-trained Zetland Stakes runner-up, Green Storm, and Harvey, from the Peter Chapple-Hyam stable.

But the most likely winner is the third Irish representative, Tennessee Stud, a Wootton Bassett colt from the Joseph O’Brien yard. He beat Shackleton with a degree of comfort in a Tipperary maiden before running a blinder to get within half a length of Hotazhell in the Group 2 Beresford Stakes.

SELECTION: TENNESSEE STUD

Next Best: Green Storm

12.23 Criterium International (Group 1) (2yo Colts & Fillies) 1m

There may be just the one local juvenile on show at Saint-Cloud on Sunday, but at least it is one of exceptional quality in the shape of another male offspring of Wootton Bassett, Maranoa Charlie.

The dogs were barking about this Christopher Head inmate long before he first graced a racecourse, and he has done anything but disappoint in his three starts to date, winning them by a combined total of almost 20 lengths.

His latest demolition came over this course and distance on very soft ground, when he soon built up a commanding advantage in the Group 3 Prix Thomas Bryon and held it all the way to the line.

Forcing tactics are likely to be employed again here, and it is hard to see any of his five rivals being able to cope with him unless Maranoa Charlie goes too fast on this very testing surface.

Yet more Wootton Bassett blood courses through the veins of two of his opponents: Aidan O’Brien’s runaway 28/1 Leopardstown maiden victor, Twain, and the Joseph O’Brien-trained Goffs Million hero, Apples And Bananas.

O’Brien senior also saddles his own sales race scorer in Mount Kilimanjaro, who landed a big Arqana pot at Longchamp on Arc Saturday, but the one most likely to chase Maranoa Charlie home is Ralph Beckett’s Group 3 Solario Stakes runner-up, Matauri Bay.

SELECTION: MARANOA CHARLIE

Next Best: Matauri Bay

2.50 Prix Royal-Oak (Group 1) (3yo+) 1m 7f 110y

Subsequent events have confirmed the impression, formed beforehand, that this year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe was a sub-standard affair, as the third and sixth home have been well-beaten.

Nevertheless, Sevenna’s Knight performed highly creditably to finish fifth in the Arc, given that mile and four furlongs is too sharp for him and he was forced to come from the rear in a race dominated by those that raced prominently.

This Andre Fabre-trained mudlark can gain compensation here by adding a first Group 1 success to the Group 2 and Group 3 wins that he has clocked up this term.

Double Major would be a big danger if back to the form that saw him carry off this prize 12 months ago (when it was run at Longchamp), but he flopped badly in the Prix du Cadran only three weeks ago. Instead, second place could well go to Aidan O’Brien’s three-year-old Galileo colt, Grosvenor Square, who should revel in the testing conditions.

SELECTION: SEVENNA’S KNIGHT Next Best: Grosvenor Square