Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud (Group 1)

IN future years, if one horse comes to symbolise the time when the coronavirus forced French racing to operate in a near-silent, crowdless vacuum, that horse will surely be Way To Paris.

It helps that the seven-year-old son of Champs Elysees is a striking grey and that, rather than acting as a Dominic Cummings-esque ‘eminence grise’, he has instead been more of a dashing white charger, bringing joy during an otherwise sombre period.

Coincidentally, Way To Paris also happens to represent a trainer, owner and breeder who all hail from the part of Europe – northern Italy – that was first hit by this pandemic, with tragic effect.

He ran on the very day that racing restarted, May 11th, although his performance in chasing home Shaman in the Group 2 Prix d’Harcourt was largely glossed over other than to illustrate how fourth-placed Sottsass had failed to reproduce anything like his best.

Thrashed

Way To Paris did cause eyebrows to be raised three weeks later when he thrashed a solid yardstick, French King, by almost five lengths in the Group 2 Grand Prix de Chantilly, and even more so another fortnight on when charging home to get within a head of a rejuvenated Sottsass in the Group 1 Prix Ganay.

At Saint-Cloud last Sunday, running for the fourth time in the seven weeks, he came from last to first in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud to notch his first ever Group 1 success on his 34th liftetime start.

Compared to his previous two outings, this neck defeat of the Czech-trained outsider, Nagano Gold, with the front-running Ziyad just a head back in third, was by no means his best form, compromised by coming from behind off a slow pace.

As far as the history books go, the margin of victory is unimportant. This was a big moment for the once formidable but now beleaguered Italian racing industry as it represented a first foreign Group 1 triumph for the green, white and red ‘Tricolore’ since Falbrav in 2003.

On a personal basis, it was also a massive achievement for 36-year-old trainer Antonio Marcialis, who in 2016 was forced by the dire economic situation within Italian racing to give up the opportunity to join his family’s Milan-based training operation and instead start his career out of the saddle at a yard in Chantilly.

This was a bold step. But Marcialis has never been lacking in courage – as a 16-year-old jockey he won a race at Varese only to discover that a fall behind him had killed his slightly older cousin, Mirco, a shocking experience that could easily have caused him to lose his appetite for our sport.

Way To Paris was one of the first horses to join his French adventure. Immediately thrown into group races, he invariably ran well, yet it took him 18 attempts to break his pattern race duck and last season Marcialis tried to convert him into a stayer with mixed results.

The initial plan for this season was much the same, before an intended outing in Saudi Arabia in February over one mile, seven furlongs was aborted at the last minute owing to lack of fitness.

Middle-distance

Way To Paris has since reinvented himself as a top middle-distance horse, who now has the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe as his primary aim.

“He’s never run well in July or August, so we will give him a break prior to a prep race before the Arc,” said Marcialis, who now has over 100 horses in his care. Having finished in 13th place in the 2019 French trainers’ championship, he is set for another personal best this year – he currently sits in fourth with 24 wins.

The winning owner, 93-year-old Paolo Ferrario, and winning breeder, Franca Vittadini (daughter of Carlo, owner-breeder of the 1975 Derby hero, Grundy) both went racing on Sunday.

Celebratory embrace

Instead of Saint-Cloud, where they were banned, they went to San Siro in Milan for the evening Gran Premio di Milano fixture. Given the result from Paris a few hours earlier, it was entirely forgivable that they broke social distancing rules to share a brief celebratory embrace!

Nagano Gold and Ziyad posted praiseworthy performances to fill the places. Czech trainer Vaclav Luka deserves great credit for having Nagano Gold ready to run for his life on his first start for almost nine months given the lack of state-of-the-art facilities at his premises in Bošovice, 60 miles south of Prague.

Ziyad’s effort suggests that his handler, Carlos Laffon-Parias, has his string back in good health following a virus-ravaged few weeks. The pair could clash again in the Grand Prix de Deauville at the end of August.