IN the tributes following the death of Dame Maggie Smith last week, frequent mention was made of her defining role in the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

One line was often repeated “Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”

It kind of summed up my relationship with the Arc. Unlike Champion Hurdles and Gold Cups which were ‘mine’ in the sense that they brought days of great excitement and joyful wins, the Arc never gave me what I wanted!

As a racing-mad youngster who became attached to the great flat horses of the season through the late 70s and 80s, come the Arc, the anticipation for the season grand finale was high.

But year after year, it became the one great race that was generally an anti-climax. After great expectation, it always let me down.

I’d be delighted to hack into the general racing records archives and switch the names of Akiyda and Ardross around for 1982, or scrub Tony Bin from the records for 1988 and promote Mtoto.

In more recent times, the wins of Sea The Stars and Enable, and some profitable punting on Solemia and Torquato Tasso, made the race fight back and say ‘See, it’s not me, it’s you’, but then most of us would have preferred Treve or Enable to win the hat-trick, rather than see Waldgeist or Sottsass’ name on the trophy?

This year does not have an obvious star like Ace Impact. It also doesn’t have the Derby, Oaks, King George or Irish Champion Stakes winner either. But, if containing no stars, it offers an intriguing betting proposition.

Three-year-olds

The French three-year-olds seem to hold sway. Look De Vega was unconvincing when beaten in the Prix Niel but he wouldn’t be the first to bounce back from that prep. And Sosie was no match for him in the Jockey-Club, but he is two-from-two since. Ghostwriter was fourth in Chantilly, how good are the three-year-olds is the question?

Los Angeles is not even the best horse in his own stable, can he win this great prize? He is solid, the Irish Champion Stakes was a good run over 10 furlongs. It’s hard not to see him in the firing line in the final furlong, Ryan Moore an obvious plus against some of these riders.

Japan have sought this race for a long time. Better horses than Shin Emperor have met defeat. But he comes from the Leopardstown race with credit.

Al Riffa also brings a Japanese connection. And one with City Of Troy from the Eclipse, where he got closer to the star three-year-old than any other this season (poor Guineas run excepted). He has been trained for this since his win in a German Group 1 but the form of that isn’t top class. Does he deserve to be less than half the price of the German challenger Fantastic Moon? Veteran Yutaka Take could cause raptures for the Japanese, but is he an asset over this track?

Most of the fancied runners are well drawn in low numbers. Bluestocking looks very solid and Rossa Ryan looked well pleased in a mid-week interview. The four-year-old filly has been busy but is tough and genuine and seems to get the mile and a half well now.

Continuous brings another Japanese connection on breeding. He looked the type to build on his very good three-year-old form but he doesn’t appear to have done so.

Andre Fabre seems keen on Msqe De Sevinge, a definite plus but will she stay and is she good enough? Two years ago she was well beaten here in the Opera, and also had two defeats by Jessica Harrington’s Trevaunance that season. She has won three ‘soft’ Group 1s this season.

So I’m left with Fantastic Moon as the choice, at the odds, but still having to pray the rain stays away for long enough tomorrow to encourage connections to let him take his chance.

He surely has more to offer at 25s than many of those at much shorter odds.

EVERY time you see the Grand National being discussed by the Jockey Club, you tend to grimace and think, what are they going to do now?

The latest comments came following a conference organised by the Racing Foundation at Ascot on Wednesday focusing on the challenge racing faces. Jockey Club chief executive Nevin Truesdale reportedly said: ”It’s also a race for which we need to maintain its acceptability to society because it is one of racing’s – and indeed Britain’s – biggest sporting assets, and it is our job to preserve it, look after it, evolve it and improve it.”

The unfortunate element to this is that I don’t think you make progress or save the future of something by making it much less appealing to the very fans who treasured it.

Yes, the risks have to be in our consciousness but maybe once, take a stance with the history of the thing. Take a chance that if we have an incident-free year, it can be so again, not constant erosion until it is gone from being a ‘must see’ event.

The comments that ‘more changes’ could be made are concerning. This year’s race came in for criticism for being comparable to any long-distance chase. Maybe one day it won’t be run over the spruce fences as they look less appealing with the branches scattered by the runners. It would be perhaps interesting to see just how long a stand would hold out, to say, “No more changes. We are leaving it as is for a period of a few years.”