WHILE Arc Weekend as a whole was a bonanza for the four-legged British and Irish visitors, with nine winners and over €5.75 million in prize money, the experience was much less rewarding for the racing fans who made a long trip to the Bois de Boulougne, or indeed for home fans.

The ParisLongchamp refurbishment was a good idea in principal, replacing the vast but crumbling old grandstands designed with post-war six-figure attendances in mind, with a modern, eye-catching facility aimed at accommodating the much lesser crowds of the current era that struggle to reach the five-figure mark. Which is all very well until you come to Arc day itself, even when the crowd amounts to last Sunday’s figure of around 35,000, a marked drop from the last Longchamp Arc, three years ago.

BASIC AMENITIES

Extra basic amenities such as toilets and food outlets need to be provided, especially when the cost of attendance has gone up so drastically. In 2015 general admission was just €20 but this year it had almost quadrupled to €75, while a ticket that included a reserved seat in the grandstand cost a whopping €249.

France Galop singularly failed to provide a customer experience that justified such a price hike. Queues for toilets, food and drink and betting windows were outrageously long, sometimes taking more than half an hour to negotiateThe proliferation of touch screen betting terminals did little to alleviate punters’ frustrations as many visitors found them too complicated to use. So the improved betting turnover from last year’s Arc day in front of a smaller crowd at Chantilly - €31.8 million, up 12.4% - could easily have been so much better.

Mercifully, the hard work of the groundstaff to alleviate the early season problems with the racing surface seemed to pay off. By the end of the day there were some grumblings about the ground being rough, but that is understandable given the number of horses that galloped across it.

While there were plenty of staff ensuring that you could not reach an enclosure that your ticket did not allow, security in other, highly important areas was alarmingly lax. One British visitor, a pub landlord from Kent, unwittingly wandered into and out of the racecourse stables without getting challenged.