A LOT of French group races are tactical affairs in which a steady early pace results in something of a sprint to the line.

This much can be confirmed using the Finishing Speed % metric (speed late in race as a percentage of average speed for race overall) explained here previously, in conjunction with the live sectionals displayed on-screen at the time.

One clear exception was last Sunday’s Group 1 Qatar Prix Jean Prat at Deauville, in which the runners over the straight 1,600 metres went pretty hard from the outset and finished slowly. In such circumstances, prominent racers are likely to have been disadvantaged.

The winner Intellogent and placed horses Cascadian and Gustav Klimt were paced most efficiently in the field, but fourth-placed Wusool (96.7% finishing speed) paid for going so fast up front and could still prove Group 1-winning calibre ridden a bit more conservatively.

The overall time of the Jean Prat was still a pretty good one – easily fastest of four at the distance on the card – and I have Intellogent’s timefigure at 114, boosted to 118 on account of the run of the race.

He had been beaten less than a length into fourth at Chantilly the time before, in the Prix du Jockey Club, another race that had been well-run and in which the form seems to have been generally under-rated.

Gustav Klimt was not discredited in third in the Jean Prat, beaten a short-neck and a length. But there were no obvious excuses for him in terms of sectionals and I am sceptical as to whether the St James’s Palace Stakes, in which he had been beaten a lesser margin by Without Parole, is quite as good as some seem to think it was.

Before that, Gustav Klimt had been put in his place in the 2000 Guineas and Irish 2000 Guineas.

Aidan O’Brien had better fortune over in America the day before, when Athena won the Belmont Oaks with a new personal-best performance, worth a figure in the region of 115 by my reckoning.

Hunting Horn was a respectable third in the Belmont Derby, running to about 112, seeming to return to his pre-Royal Ascot level in the process.