PRIX MAURICE DE

GHEEST (GROUP 1)

POLYDREAM was the Queen of Deauville last Sunday, but her victory in the Group 1 LARC Prix Maurice de Gheest did little to answer the tricky conundrum of who will be 2018’s European Champion Sprinter.

The five Group 1 sprint races run so far this season have produced five different winners. Should, as the bookmakers expect, Battaash become the sixth different winner in the Nunthorpe Stakes on August 24th, the sprinting waters will be muddied even further.

Polydream may not help the situation by avoiding sprints for the rest of the campaign. Having broken her top level duck over the unusual trip of six and a half furlongs on Sunday, her obvious next target is the seven-furlong Prix de la Foret at ParisLongchamp on Arc day, and thereafter she would have a number of possible objectives over a mile on the other side of the Atlantic.

A safety factor of 20 meant that three of the 23 runners declared for the Maurice de Gheest were eliminated. The race has never before witnessed such a cavalry charge – it was the largest field since 2004 when a full field of 20 was expected only for two to be scratched on the morning of the race.

Trainer George Scott would probably have groaned when his charge, James Garfield, was allotted stall 20, but as it transpired the outside draw may have been advantageous. Lit up by first-time blinkers but put into the stalls last, the son of Exceed And Excel burst out of the boxes and was soon towing a three-strong far side group into a two-length lead.

Merging with the rest of the field with a quarter of a mile to run, he still held a clear advantage a furlong out only for Polydream, who had held a midfield position to beyond halfway, to mow him down in the last 50 yards and win by half a length.

It was a seventh success in the race for trainer Freddy Head – all with fillies – and it would be no great surprise if Polydream went on to emulate his two previous winners, Goldikova and Moonlight Cloud, by landing it three times. “Polydream may only be small, but Moonlight Cloud was even smaller,” Head joked afterwards.

In a rich vein of form having taken the Group 1 Prix Rothschild thanks to With You seven days earlier, Head reported: “I was more confident than last Sunday because Polydream is very good, though at the furlong pole I thought that we would never catch the leader.

“She won the Prix de Calvados here last August in the style of a champion, beating Laurens, and then she got injured in the Prix Marcel Boussac, which cost her that race and meant that she needed an operation.

“So she came back to me late this spring and was very short of work going into the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches, which wasn’t run to suit her in any case. She then won the Prix du Palais-Royal in early June and she has made huge physical progress since then – I have never had her better.”

Making the running for the first time in his life, James Garfield remained two and a half lengths clear of fellow British raiders The Tin Man and Librisa Breeze to take second, prompting an outpouring of emotion from Scott.

“I won’t lie, my heart is broken, but he’s just been beaten by a better horse,” the third-season trainer said. “This performance opens all kinds of doors for him, including in Hong Kong and Dubai, and will hopefully mean that he will race on as a four-year-old.”

Unlike Polydream, James Garfield has never missed a day’s training, and he has been a wonderful standard bearer for his young handler, running with credit at successive Royal Ascot meetings as well as at a Breeders’ Cup, a York Ebor meeting and a Glorious Goodwood.