Emirates Poule d’Essai des

Pouliches (Group 1)

THE results of the first classics of the French season, the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and Pouliches, at ParisLongchamp last Sunday, had a certain symmetry. Both witnessed the biggest Gallic victories for members of famous training dynasties.

But while the Pouliches, as expected, went the way of the 36-year-old rookie Christopher Head, the Poulains threw up a much more surprising denouement as 55-year-old Andreas Schutz, the fourth generation of a famed German training family, celebrated his most prestigious win since he came to France in 2016 after an initially successful spell in Hong Kong came to an ignominious end.

The Pouliches victory of Blue Rose Cen is easier to explain. France’s Champion Two-Year-Old of 2022 may not have quite won with the panache that she showed over this course and distance in October, when putting five lengths between herself and her Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac rivals, but the Churchill filly’s superiority was never seriously questioned.

Repeat

In the end she repeated her defeat of Lindy from the Group 3 Prix de la Grotte of four weeks earlier almost to the letter, this time seeing her off by a length and three-quarters rather than a length and a half.

The front-running Sauterne held on for third, another length and a quarter adrift and half a length clear of fourth-placed Kelina with Aidan O’Brien’s Never Ending Story taking fifth, five lengths behind Blue Rose Cen compared to the five and a quarter length deficit she had suffered when third in the Boussac.

Head, son of Freddy and nephew of Criquette, two of the best French trainers of the last 30 years, was charmingly self-deprecating afterwards, joking: “Given my surname, I need to achieve a lot more than I have managed today. But it’s a start, maybe I’ve earned my place at the family dining table.”

Owned and bred by Yeguada Centurion, the racing operation of the Cuban-born Spaniard Leopoldo Fernandez Pujals, Blue Rose Cen has, according to Head, had the Pouliches on her agenda for over a year now, and will press on with the next step of her grand plan, the Prix de Diane.

It could be an incredible classic campaign for the Head/Pujals combination as another member of their team, the Rock Of Gibraltar colt Big Rock, landed his fourth consecutive victory with a pillar-to-post five-length triumph in the Group 3 Prix de Guiche on May 9th to catapult himself to the top of ante-post lists for the Prix du Jockey Club.

Magnitude

“I don’t think I can really grasp the magnitude of what has just happened,” Head admitted. “I’ve adored this filly ever since I first started training her and she’s toughened up so much since then and become a real professional.”

“I am minded to stick to the French programme with her rather than have a go at the Coronation Stakes. I think that she will stay the extended mile and a quarter no problem but if she doesn’t there are plenty more mile races to go for.

“Her pedigree [her dam, Queen Blossom, landed the Park Express Stakes over a mile for P.J. Prendergast but went on to lift a Grade 3 prize over a mile and a half in California for Richard Baltas] suggests that she will get further.”

Lindy was doing her best work at the finish to leave her trainer, Christoph Ferland, looking forward to a Diane re-match while O’Brien was satisfied with Never Ending Story and suggested that she may soon be seen over a longer trip.

Emirates Poule d’Essai des Poulains (Group 1)

THE early career of Andreas Schutz was plain sailing: taking over the Cologne yard from his father Bruno at the age of 30, winning five Deutsches Derbies and five Preis der Dianas (German Oaks) as well as the trainers’ championship in 2000, before relocating to Hong Kong in 2006 and immediately getting his hands on one of the former British colony’s all-time greats, star miler Good Ba Ba.

But things turned sour for him in the Far East, and having failed to notch the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s minimum number of winners for a season, his licence there was withdrawn and he returned to Europe with his tail between his legs.

Setting up in Chantilly, the expected supply of German owners never really materialised and, after he took almost five seasons to register his first pattern victory from his new surroundings, the stable dwindled to its current size of just 15 horses.

Unconsidered

So, little surprise that his Poule d’Essai des Poulains contender, Marhaba Ya Sanafi, was sent off an unconsidered 26/1 chance. As Schutz himself mused afterwards, the French have not even learned how to spell his name properly.

A son of Muhaarar, a Haras des Faunes-based stallion who has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance of late after a difficult start to his second career, Marhaba Ya Sanafi was expected to struggle, in particular against American Flag, who had brushed him aside over this track and trip a month earlier in the Group 3 Prix de Fontainebleau.

But the ground had dried appreciably to be riding only dead, so this was a very different test to the muddy Fontainebleau, and American Flag was on the back foot from the start having been sluggish from the stalls and taken a while to regain contact with the rest of a nine-strong field.

The Brian Meehan-trained Isaac Shelby made good use of the cutaway in the straight to slip through into the lead and looked the likeliest winner approaching the half-furlong pole only for the Jaber Abdullah-owned winner to catch him close home to score by a short neck.

Surprise

Schutz admitted his surprise at the verdict, with the proviso that he never really knows how good his better charges are these day as, unlike at the start of his career, he does not have enough similar types in his stables to gauge them against.

“Marhaba Ya Sanafi didn’t have to make his own running this time and, though beforehand I was hoping for more rain, he seems to have handled the quicker ground perfectly well,” Schutz said.

“We will have to discuss it, but the Prix du Jockey Club looks like an obvious place to go.”

Meehan hid his disappointment well at this narrow reverse and is considering a drop down in distance for Isaac Shelby at Royal Ascot, with the Commonwealth Cup a possible alternative to the St James’s Palace Stakes.

Fourth-placed American Flag is likely to get his chance to prove this was just a bad day at the office in the Jockey Club, while Aidan O’Brien’s miserable 2023 classics’ campaign continued with Hans Andersen beating only one rival.

St Mark’s Basilica Coolmore Prix Saint-Alary (Group 1)

JOCKEY Christophe Soumillon, who endured a torrid time aboard American Flag and had been surplus to requirements in the Pouliches, got a chance at redemption in the day’s third Group 1, the mile and two furlongs Prix Saint-Alary for three-year-old fillies, in partnership with the unbeaten favourite, Jannah Rose.

The Belgian did indeed come out on top aboard the daughter of Frankel, much to the delight of her small-time Irish breeder, John Hayes, who only owns three mares, though it was tight.

Jannah Rose probably got to the front too soon, with a furlong to run, and the cavalry were coming for her in the closing stages, but the flying finish of Elusive Princess was thwarted by three-quarters of a length.

Carlos Laffon-Parias, who trains this €650,000 Goffs Orby purchase for Al Shira’aa Farms, the racing operation of Sheikha Fatima bint Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the UAE, said: “I was weighing up whether to go for this race or the Pouliches but when I heard that [the ante-post favourite for the Prix de Diane] Pensee du Jour was not going to run, I plumped for the Saint-Alary, and once I had seen the performance of Blue Rose Cen I knew that I had made the right choice.

“In five weeks’ time [in the Diane] they can all meet – that should be fun!”

Sprinters

France seems short of good sprinters and there was a British success in the Group 3 Prix de Saint-Georges when the Karl Burke-trained five-year-old mare White Lavender won by a length and a half under Tom Marquand. She had only been beaten a short neck by The Platinum Queen in last year’s Prix de l’Abbaye.