OFTEN it can be a tricky assignment to decide who deserves the title ‘racing personality of the season’ in France. In 2025 this is categorically not the case.

The achievements of Francis Graffard tower above the accomplishments of anyone else over the past 12 months, be they trainer or jockey.

To say that it has been an outstanding campaign for the Chantilly-based handler is a ridiculous understatement.

He has dominated at home. He has dominated abroad. He has enjoyed more annual Group 1 triumphs – 14 – than any other French trainer in the history of the pattern.

When the season kicked off, he had managed a mere dozen top level victories during his career. This year, in one fell swoop, he has more than doubled that total.

He had gone close to landing the trainers’ title once before, in 2020, when In Swoop’s neck defeat at the hands of Sottsass in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe might have cost him the Championship.

Since then, with the all-important addition of the Aga Khan family’s hugely powerful band of home-breds to his stable, his string has more than doubled – by the end of the year he will have saddled almost 200 different horses since January 1st.

€10 million barrier

Domestically, he has become the first person to break the €10 million barrier for earnings and is set to end up clinching his initial training crown by the ridiculous margin of over €5 millon.

This, remember, is without adding in the riches he accumulated in five overseas Group 1 wins, most notably Calandagan’s Japan Cup conquest which, thanks to qualifying for a bonus as a result of his earlier King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes victory, was worth a cool €6 million.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. Graffard plundered his first Breeders’ Cup race too, with Gezora in the Filly & Mare Turf - that added almost €1 million to the kitty.

Who would have thought that Calandagan, whose resolution was understandably questioned when he appeared to be outbattled by Jan Brueghel while registering his fourth consecutive second place in the Coronation Cup at Epsom in June, would follow it with four momentous victories?

The Irish-bred gelded son of Gleneagles was to show fighting qualities in abundance when repelling the local hero Masquerade Ball with a desperate late rally to complete that quartet in Japan.

Daryz dazzles

Graffard’s other flagbearer was Daryz, a Sea The Stars three-year-old colt who was unraced as a juvenile and did not contest his first pattern race until carrying off the Group 2 Prix Eugene Adam in late July.

He then finished last in a bizarre renewal of the Juddmonte International, when the simple fact that Graffard was willing to let such a greenhorn travel to York to take on the best should have alerted us to his potential.

Following a tenderly-ridden second in a trial, he showed the full extent of his talent when beating Minnie Hauk by a head to deny Ireland its first taste of Arc glory since 2016.

THE link between Calandagan and Daryz is that, along with no less than nine other individual group winners in 2025, they were bred and owned by Prince Karim Aga Khan, who died in February at the age of 88.

Champion Owner in France on 16 occasions and winner of the breeders’ title 12 times, his impact on the sport over the past six decades, in particular in France, is hard to exaggerate.

Thankfully, his daughter, Princess Zahra, appears to be almost as besotted with the thoroughbred as her beloved father and, with the newly titled ‘Aga Khan Studs SC’ already ensured of both French champion owner and breeder gongs in its inaugural year, the family’s continued commitment to the industry looks assured, at least in the short term.

Just to prove that, even during the best of times, a trainer’s life tends to include a few thorns among the bed of roses, Graffard was also responsible for strong candidates for the title ‘most frustrating’ and ‘most disappointing’ horse of the year.

Second best

Most frustrating could be Zarigana, who, for a second and third time in her career, came out second best in Group 1 races having appeared to lack an appetite for a fight. If the France Galop stewards knew as much about her character in May as they do now, they might never have awarded her the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches, a decision taken in the presumption that she would have gone past the winner, Shes Perfect, but for having suffered earlier interference.

As for ‘most disappointing’, it is difficult to look further than Vertical Blue, who edged out Zarigana in the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac in 2024. Subsequently sold for a whopping 3.2 million guineas, she failed to trouble the judge in three outings this year, ending with a dismal 13th of 15 in a listed race just 48 hours before Daryz dazzled in the Arc.

FOR the third straight year, French-trained horses won more of their nation’s 28 Group 1 races than the visiting hordes from Ireland and Britain.

However, the home team continued to come up short in the top juvenile events, with Aidan O’Brien failing to complete a clean sweep of all five only because Gstaad was edged out by a short neck by the Karl Burke-trained Venetian Sun in the Prix Morny.

O’Brien also landed the two colts classics, Henri Matisse taking the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and Camille Pissarro lifting the Prix du Jockey-Club, not to mention the Prix Jacques Le Marois with Diego Velazquez.

The only non-Aidan Irish triumph came in the Prix de l’Opera, where Jessica Harrington’s Barnavara clung on for a narrow front-running success.

Jockeys

On the riding front, the Italian-born Cristian Demuro, who left his homeland immediately after he became champion jockey there for the second time in 2012, landed his first riding title having never before finished in the first two.

He accumulated less prize money than three of his rivals but his total of 180 winners was 12 more than the reigning and four-time champion Maxime Guyon.

SWITCHING codes, the jumps jockeys title, which runs right through until New Year’s Eve, is still in the balance. But it looks like Lucas Zuliani, the 23-year-old younger brother of the 2020 champ Angelo Zuliani, will hold on to claim his first championship.

On the training side of things, it has proved to be a very open year, with the top six all set to finish within around €600,000 of each other in the final standings.

Francois Nicolle, who had to settle for second in 2024 after a six-year reign, has built up enough of a margin thanks to Diamond Carl’s surprise win in the Grade 1 Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris to all but guarantee another crown, ahead of Mickael Seror, who only broke into the top 10 in 2023.

Diamond Carl was absent for the big end-of-season chase, the Grade 1 Prix La Haye Jousselin, which went the way of Nicolle’s neighbours, Arnaud Chaille-Chaille and Francois Pamart, after the late fall of their leading candidate, Kaadam, allowed his unheralded stablemate Toscana Du Berlais, who was on a 12-race losing streak, to beat the Grand Steep’ runner-up, Kolokico.

Top jumpers

Cracking staying hurdler Losange Bleu, a Dominique Bressou-trained six-year-old Martaline gelding, has been the most consistent of France’s top jumpers for a few years.

He took his career earnings beyond the €1.4 million mark with an 11th graded win and fourth at the highest level in last month’s Grand Prix d’Automne.

But he had his colours lowered in May by probably the most exciting young National Hunt horse in the country, the Spanish Moon five-year-old El Clavel, who proved a length and a quarter too strong in the most prestigious hurdle race on the calendar, the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil.

This was just El Clavel’s sixth career start and helped propel his Anglo-Swedish trainers, Noel George and Amanda Zetterholm, into fourth place in the championship.

George, the 26-year-old son of British trainer Tom George, suggested afterwards that the Cheltenham Gold Cup could be on his stable star’s agenda at some point.

Sadly, that will not be for a while yet, as El Clavel suffered a setback during his October reappearance and will be on the sidelines until autumn 2026.