Qatar Prix de la

Foret (group 1)

THE other compensatory victory came in the Qatar Prix de la Foret. Predictably, with 15 runners hurtling around the seven-furlong course without the aid of a false rail to spread them out in the straight, this resulted in a number of hard luck stories, in particular for the favourite, Polydream.

The beneficiary was One Master who made the unusual jump from Tipperary Group 3 to Parisian Group 1 to bring the smile back to the face of William Haggas, two hours after he had been forced to hide his understandable disappointment in winning €1.14 million with Sea Of Class in the Arc yet just missing out on so much more.

Ironically, One Master broke from exactly the same stall, number 15, as her stable companion.

Just as when aboard Lily’s Candle in the Boussac, his rider, Pierre-Charles Boudot, was thus forced to play the waiting game and only arrived on the scene in last 200 yards before nailing Inns Of Court in the nick of time to score by a short-head.

Freddy Head, a Group 1-winning trainer on Saturday thanks to Call The Wind, had high hopes of more of the same on Arc Day but saw his weekend steadily deteriorate with Anodor, With You and Tantheem all eclipsed.

His luck reached rock bottom here as Polydream was all dressed up with nowhere to go near the inside rail throughout the final quarter-mile.

Another trainer to suffer a frustrating afternoon was O’Brien. Though his Gustav Klimt finished three places in front of Polydream in fourth, he too could have won with a clear passage – he was beaten a length and a half yet Ryan Moore never had enough room to warrant using his whip aboard the admirably consistent Galileo colt.