Haras de Fresnay-le-Buffard Prix Jacques Le Marois (Group 1)

THE trouble with being a late-bloomer is that, sometimes, once you burst into full flower, it takes a while for the public to forget the ‘ordinary’ impression you gave during your early days.

Charyn was nothing short of superb in dismissing his six opponents by three lengths in last Sunday’s Group 1 Haras de Fresnay-le-Buffard Prix Jacques Le Marois at Deauville. Yet the four-year-old son of Dark Angel is still not receiving the plaudits that his record of four wins and a second from five 2024 starts deserves, people no doubt remembering the defeats that he suffered in each of his first six career Group 1 attempts.

Should he go on to achieve his goal of landing the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot in mid October, and become the first horse to complete the Queen Anne/Marois/QE II treble since the instigation of Champions Day in 2011, Charyn’s dominance of this season’s miling division will hopefully be recognised in full.

Jockey Sylvestre de Sousa, whose booking this spring by trainer Roger Varian and owner Nurlan Bizakov has coincided with Charyn’s sudden upturn in form, cannot have had a moment’s worry on Sunday. He got the perfect tow into the race from the front-running Big Rock, then only needed to shake up his partner in order to put the result beyond doubt.

Honourable mention

The Poule d’Essais des Poulains hero, Metropolitan, who became the solitary three-year-old in the field when Haatem’s rider, James Doyle, felt something amiss on the way to the start and withdrew his mount, took an honourable, if well-beaten, second place.

With Ryan Moore aboard for the first time, Inspiral’s bid for a third straight Marois triumph became much harder when she took a moment to consent to leaving the stalls, forfeiting at least five lengths.

The lack of an end-to-end gallop allowed her to regain contact with the others, and she did well to come home just a head further adrift in third, in turn a head in front of another Newmarket trainee, Simon and Ed Crisford’s Quddwah, but Inspiral’s appetite for the rigours of competition at the age of five is growing ever more questionable. God knows what level of criticism poor Kieran Shoemark would have been subjected to if he, not Moore, had again been in her saddle.

UNUSUALLY for this home-dominated campaign, two more of Sunday’s big Deauville prizes were exported, one to Britain and one to Ireland.

Any feeling of disappointment felt by John and Thady Gosden following Inspiral’s display in the previous race was washed away when their exciting three-year-old, Ombudsman, took his record to a perfect three-from-three with an easy three and a half length score in the one-mile, two-furlong Listed Prix Nureyev.

Gosden senior is already looking forward to next term for this Ballyhimikin Stud-bred and Godolphin-owned colt, who will be raced sparingly for the rest of this year.

For Ireland

Joseph O’Brien’s Stromberg finished well to almost snatch second in the Nureyev and the County Kilkenny trainer had been on target at the start of an excellent day for the stable, which peaked with Al Riffa’s Group 1 success in Germany, when his juvenile colt Cowardofthecounty landed the Group 3 Prix Francois Boutin.

Suited by this initial try at seven furlongs after a close seventh in the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot, the Irish-bred son of Kodi Bear beat the odds-on favourite, Hoquetot, by a length and a half.

A switch to pace-setting tactics enable Jessica Harrington’s Comic Book to finish a fine fourth behind the Prix Vermeille-bound Mosaique, trained by Carlos Laffon-Parias, in the Group 3 1m 4f 110y Prix Lady O’Reilly (Prix Minerve), while Al Hakeem, from the Jean-Claude Rouget yard, gained his first victory in only three starts since a brilliant fourth place in the 2022 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe via a hard-fought half-length verdict in the Group 3 1m 2f Prix Gontaut Biron.