In Swoop finds his speed when needed

GIVEN the prevailing soft ground, the winning time for the Jockey Club was a pretty decent 2m 07.3s – quicker than five of the preceding 10 renewals.

In contrast, the Group 2 Grand Prix de Chantilly was a joke of a race and so slow was the tempo that the front-running Influx got bored on the home turn and spent much of it trying to head off for a picnic on the adjoining lawns.

The eventual winning time of 2m 45.37s was not just the slowest in the race’s 25-year history, it was also comprehensively slower than was clocked in the two decades that this mile-and-a-half event was staged at long-defunct Evry Racecourse.

It is therefore much to the credit of In Swoop that he managed to win comfortably by half a length. Should the son of Adlerflug ever encounter his ideal combination of testing ground, a mile and a half and an end-to-end gallop, he could be really something.

Those are the conditions usually thrown up by the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, though not in 2020 when In Swoop was nevertheless a fine second.

Reputation

Given the poverty of the opposition, this outing did nothing to enhance his reputation, though in truth this might have been his easiest victory to date.

Jockey Olivier Peslier summed it up nicely by saying: “We were walking – it wasn’t a mile-and-a-half race, it was a three-furlong sprint!”

In the circumstances, Peslier deserves credit for ensuring his mount was the first to challenge Influx at the top of the straight.

Trainer Francis Graffard added: “In Swoop only ever does the bare minimum but he does have a burst of speed, even if it doesn’t look like it.

“He’s getting stronger and stronger and I have to run him because he is very lazy at home and is constantly messing about.

“He’s now got the choice between the King George and the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud. Then it will be the Prix Foy and the Arc.”

Consolation

The Group 2 Prix de Sandringham is meant to be a consolation race for those who missed out in the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches. And so it would have been had not the Pouliches third (Kennella), fifth (See The Rose) and 10th (Silvestri) found their way blocked by a filly, Tahlie, who had given that classic a miss in order to win a listed event five days earlier.

Now Tahlie, a daughter of Rio De La Plata trained by Pascal Bary who had begun her season by beating the subsequent Pouliches heroine, Coeursamba, into third in a conditions race, held off Kennella’s late thrust by a head with the others two and a half lengths and more behind.

The winner may now step up to Group 1 company in the Prix Rothschild.

Sprint

The impression that some European pattern sprint races take little winning these days gained further credence following the running of the Group 2 Prix du Gros-Chene.

This five-furlong event went the way of the 22/1 outsider, Pradaro, a six-year-old gelding who is one of just eight horses trained in Belgium by Sofie Lanslots.

He had been bought out of a claimer for a paltry €22,402 exactly eight months earlier and had been beaten in all nine of his subsequent outings, in handicap and claiming company!