Prix du Moulin de Longchamp (Group 1)

LAST Sunday at ParisLongchamp saw two little-known former jockeys each enjoy their best day since taking out a training licence some 15 years earlier.

For one of them, the Deauville-based Yann Barberot who has been contesting pattern races for over a decade, it was the culmination of a simple story of steady progress.

But for the other, 58-year-old Patrice Cottier, who lives and works at the Calas training centre some 500 miles away from Paris near the Mediterranean coast not far from Marseille, the history of how he got his hands on Sauterne, the Kingman filly who gave him his first Group 1 success by landing the Prix du Moulin, is a much more complicated tale.

Cottier has only pricked the consciousness of those who monitor the upper echelons of French racing in the last 12 months or so.

Before then, he was labouring away down in the far South, with rarely more than a dozen horses in his care at any one time, scratching out a living while averaging less than 10 winners a year.

Suddenly, he now trains well over 50 horses and has become a regular participant in the top races. What changed is that Cedric Rossi, one of four members of the Rossi family arrested as part of a doping and fraud investigation in December 2021, persuaded the federal judge, who had initially stipulated that none of the quartet could continue to train, to allow him to take up an offer from Cottier to be his head lad.

Overrule

France Galop had no authority to overrule the judge, so Cedric joined Cottier’s team, bringing a large number of choicely-bred horses with him.

A late-season surge saw Cottier end 2022 just outside the top 20 of the trainers’ championship with 59 wins.

He exceeded that seasonal total on Sunday, when a big race double via Sauterne and Horizon Dore in the Group 3 Prix du Prince d’Orange, his fifth and sixth group wins of both the year and his career, left him in fifth place in the trainers’ table.

Sauterne is a remarkable animal. Owned and bred by a colossus of equine sport in France, Jean-Pierre Dubois, a man who has reached the summit of all three branches of the nation’s horse racing and breeding (trotting, jumping and flat), Sauterne has been traipsing up and down the road network, clocking up many thousands of miles, to race no less than 11 times in the just over nine months since she made her racecourse debut at Deauville at the end of November.

No rest for her, not during the winter nor any traditional summer break so beloved of most of the nation’s trainers.

She has also endured numerous hard races, not least a notorious renewal of the Group 3 Prix Imprudence back in April, when her rider, Christophe Soumillon, took part in a half-mile long barging match with Mickael Barzalona’s mount, Quickstep, which saw both jockeys hit with bans.

Astonishingly

Sauterne recovered astonishingly quickly, winning a listed race under the man who has since become her regular partner, Tony Piccone, just three weeks later, and then finishing third in the Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Pouliches less than three weeks after that.

Two excellent second places followed, in a Group 2 and a Group 1, either side of an entry in the Goffs London Sale where she failed to reach what now seems a low reserve of £1.2 million, but when she finished third in what looked like a sub-standard Group 1 Prix Rothschild at the end of July, it appeared that her busy campaign was finally catching up with her.

Not a bit of it. Another five weeks on and she found unexpected reserves of stamina to overhaul the front-runner and perennial Group 1 bridesmaid, Big Rock, in the last 100 yards of the Moulin to score by a length with the Sussex Stakes runner-up, Facteur Cheval, a half-length back in third.

Out of a half-sister to Dubois’ wonderful mare Stacelita, who won four top level races in France and two more in America and is now producing exceptional foals in Japan, Sauterne was called ‘incredibly tough’ by her trainer, who added that she will be kept on the go and aimed at the Group 1 Prix de la Foret on Arc day.

Perfect

“Everything went like a dream,” Cottier said. “Tony was able to get the perfect lead into the race from Big Rock and then she just quickened past him.”

Cottier must be getting used to the glare of publicity that he has avoided through most of his professional life.

He also ventured into the ParisLongchamp winner’s enclosure 90 minutes earlier after Horizon Dore, a gelded son of Dabirsim bought for €45,000 by Cedric Rossi’s brother, Charley, at Arqana as a yearling, had sported the dark green and yellow Gousserie Racing silks made famous by the Champion Stakes victor, Sealiway, to a brilliant victory in the Prix du Prince d’Orange.

Cristian Demuro, the winning rider, never needed to use his whip as Horizon Dore shrugged off the 4lb penalty that he picked up in winning the Group 2 Prix Eugene Adam to beat Mr Moliere by a smooth two and a half lengths.

Pauline Chehboub, Gousserie’s racing manager, said afterwards: “That was brilliant because Horizon Dore wasn’t 100% today, we left something to work on with autumn targets in mind.”

“He should come on for it and the Prix Dollar [at ParisLongchamp on September 30th] fits into his schedule nicely, as there are then three weeks for him to recover before he tries to emulate Sealiway at Ascot.”

SUNDAY’S ParisLongchamp action got under way with the juvenile colt Beauvatier again displaying an overwhelming superiority over his opponents, taking his perfect record to four from four with an easy length victory in the Group 3 Prix La Rochette over seven furlongs.

The fact that his trainer, Yann Barberot, was there in person to witness it is an indication of just how highly he rates the son of Lope De Vega: less than two hours later, not far over the Franco/German border at Baden-Baden, Barberot landed only the second Group 1 of his career (and by far the most prestigious, as the previous one had been in Italy) when Zagrey carried off the Grosser Preis von Baden.

“Beauvatier is just a wonderful horse, there’s not much more to say,” Barberot reacted. “He amazes me every time he races and every time he works at home.

“We hadn’t done much with him recently as his main target is the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere [on October 1st], so he will improve a lot for the run, but he showed a flash of class, he had the race won in the space of four strides halfway up the straight.”

THERE was one blot on Cottier’s day as Skazino was sent off as the 6/4 favourite for the Group 3 Prix Gladiateur over a mile, seven furlongs and 110 yards but finished a never dangerous fifth of seven behind the comfortable two-length winner, Lastotchka.

Twice placed at Group 2 level but stepping up to this distance for the first time, her trainer Jean-Marie Beguigne suggested afterwards that the Group 1 Prix Royal-Oak will be her main end-of-season target.

The other feature, the mile and two furlongs Group 3 Coupe de Maisons-Laffitte, saw another of Kingman’s progeny, Naranco, win for Spain by three-quarters of a length over the German raider, Lord Charming. Formerly with Ralph Beckett, the four-year-old is now trained in Madrid by Guillermo Arizkorreta.