Prix d’Isaphan (Group 1)

IF most European racing fans were not aware of the talents of Jerome Reynier, the 35-year-old Irish National Stud course graduate turned Marseille-based trainer, before last weekend, then they certainly should be now.

Reynier enjoyed a stupendous 48 hours, begun by landing a pair of listed races, and combined prize money of €57,500, in Bordeaux on Saturday.

Then, at ParisLongchamp last Sunday, he went ‘bang, bang, bang’, consecutively landing the three feature events on a prestigious card.

First a €50,0000 handicap, then a strongly-contested all-aged Group 3 contest and finally grabbing the first Group 1 triumph of his burgeoning career when Skalleti overcame the ever-drying ground and the consequent track bias to get up in the last stride and lift the €250,000 Prix d’Ispahan.

For some time now Reynier has been one of the young thrusters making waves within the French racing industry and the d’Ispahan was not actually his biggest success, financially-speaking. That honour still remains the Bahrain International Trophy he annexed with Royal Julius in late 2019.

But for a man who started out as a public trainer with a mere four horses just eight years ago, this represented a pretty dramatic entrance onto the big stage.

And to think that he was so smitten with the Irish way of life while at the Irish National Stud and spending the 2005 breeding season at Coolmore, it was his intention to make the island his home, only for fate to intervene as illness struck his father and caused him to return home to Marseille!

Hit the front

The nine and a quarter furlong d’Ispahan looked set to be a British benefit when the Charlie Hills-trained Tilsit hit the front half way up the home straight only to be joined by fellow cross-Channel raider, My Oberon, from the William Haggas yard.

But such an assessment would have been to underestimate the determination of the odds-on favourite, Skalleti, and the persistence of his rider, Gerald Mosse.

Lots of factors went against the Kendargent gelding before and during the race: the ground dried up so quickly that the other mud-lover in the field (The Revenant) was scratched, the track was favouring front-runners, the pace was not especially strong and he lost a hind shoe and repeatedly changed legs in the closing stages.

Despite all this, Skalleti came from last and, having looked likely to manage no better than third, suddenly engaged overdrive in the last 100 yards to get up on the line to score by a head from Tilsit with My Oberon a short neck back in third.

“In today’s conditions Skalleti has had to show that he’s one of the best older horses in the world regardless of the going,” Reynier said.

“There aren’t many Group 1s open to geldings and this race fell very well for us in terms of timing so we had to take the risk. We really regretted not being able to send him to run in the Tattersalls Gold Cup, which was run on soft ground and did not look a particularly hot race, but in the current circumstances it just wasn’t possible to get him to Ireland.”

“His ultimate goal this season is to try and go one better than last year in the Champion Stakes at Ascot in October.”

The one sour note following the d’Ispahan was the 16-day whip ban handed down to Mosse for striking Skalleti eight times with his whip – two above the legal limit.

Normally this would incur an eight-day penalty but Mosse’s suspension was doubled because it was his second offence.

Punishment

Without condoning the 54-year-old’s ride, to the naked eye he did not seem to give Skalleti a particularly hard race and, given that his mount was struggling to quicken and keep straight on unsuitably fast ground having lost a shoe and only got his nose in front one stride from the finish, the punishment seems quite harsh.

Like Skalleti and Elusive Foot (the handicapper who sparked Reynier’s big treble), Marianafoot, winner of the preceding seven-furlong Group 3 Prix du Palais-Royal, sported the grey and gold hooped silks of owner Jean-Claude Seroul.

Off for 10 months after suffering an injury early last year, Marianafoot has come back better than ever, winning four straight races over the winter and spring, and his comfortable pillar-to-post success over the hot favourite, Duhail, keeps the six-year-old son of Footstepsinthesand on course for his main target, next month’s Group 1 Prix Maurice de Gheest.