Racing TV Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil (Grade 1)
TRIAL races can be deceiving. If last weekend taught us anything, it is that you should not always take the results of trials, or seasonal debuts, at face value.
This was true on the flat at Newbury last Saturday, with Lead Artist reversing form with Dancing Gemini in no uncertain terms, and was the key theme to the results of the two biggest jump races on the French calendar, which were both run at Auteuil over the weekend.
On Saturday, the top hurdling prize, the Grade 1 Racing TV Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil over three miles, one furlong and 110 yards, went not to the reigning champion and 2/1 on favourite, Losange Bleu, but to the young pretender, El Clavel, a five-year-old who Losange Bleu had given 18lb and an eight-length beating to at the same track a month earlier.
Then 24 hours later and the chasing crown was knocked from the head of Gran Diose in the Grade 1 Grand Steeple Chase de Paris by Diamond Carl, an opponent Gran Diose had dismissed on 9lb worse terms just three weeks earlier.
Some come on for a run, others stand still or go backwards, and the trainers themselves can rarely be sure which way their charges will go.
Lost early position
Starting with the Grande Course de Haies, Irish hopes rested with Shark Hanlon’s Hewick, who lost a reasonable early position to drop back to last with more than a circuit to run.
This miracle of a horse has extricated himself from tighter spots in the past, but this was not to be his day.
Jockey Gavin Sheehan, who later reported that he had been less than happy with his mount almost from the word ‘go’, had to be at his most persistent to ensure that they returned home with the €9,750 prize for seventh, 32 lengths behind the winner.
That winner was El Clavel, a son of Spanish Moon that father and son Tom and Noel George, officially trainers on opposite sides of the English Channel, but very much still a team alongside Noel’s Chantilly business partner, Amanda Zetterholm, had sourced for €38,000 at Arqana as a yearling before selling him on to owners Misol Racing.
Remarkably, El Clavel had only made his racecourse debut in a Compiegne hurdle little more than 13 months earlier, so the sky is the limit for him.
Ridden by James Reveley, he relished this half-mile longer trip than for his previous clash with Losange Bleu and, split by the width of the course up the run-in, passed the post a length and a quarter clear of his old adversary.
First Grade 1
George junior, who is only 24 years old, was celebrating his first Grade 1 triumph and was bouncing back rapidly from having seen his stable star, the King George runner-up, Il Est Francais, surprisingly beaten in a listed hurdle just three days earlier.
El Clavel looks like he could be more straightforward than Il Est Francais, and the Georges are already talking in terms of Cheltenham Gold Cups for him in coming seasons.
“We can never get him off the bridle at home, you need three horses to work him with,” a jubilant Noel said afterwards.
Diamond Carl sparkles in Grand Steep
Prix Ferdinand Dufaure (Chase) (Grade 1)
Le Defi des Haras - Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris (Chase) (Grade 1)
Prix Alain du Breil - Course de Haies de Printemps des 4yo (Hurdle) (Grade 1)
THE 65-year-old Francois Nicolle started training at roughly the same age as Noel George but, after a career that took more than three decades to burst into life, had to wait until Sunday to finally reach the pinnacle with his first Grand Steep’ success.
The horse that made it happen was Diamond Carl, a seven-year-old son of Diamond Boy, a stallion who has been based at Kilbarrry Lodge Stud in Co Waterford since 2018.
One of the nation’s top four-year-old chasers in 2022, but then off the track for nigh-on two years, he thrived for this step up to three miles and six furlongs and saw off the five-year-old, Kolokico, by six lengths, with last year’s runner-up, Grandeur Nature, another eight and a half lengths adrift in third and Gran Diose only fifth.
Clement Lefebvre, who rode Grand Diose in 2024, was again the winning pilot, a last-minute replacement for Bertrand Lestrade, who suffered a shoulder injury the day before.
Lestrade was also meant to be aboard Kivala Du Berlais, the David Cottin-trained Felix de Giles-ridden winner of an extremely tight finish to the Grade 1 four-year-old hurdle, the Prix Alain du Breil, while the weekend’s fourth Grade 1, the Prix Ferdinand Dufaure, went the way of Lanivtsi, to give compensation to Losange Bleu’s handler, Dominique Bressou.
Coolmore Stud suffered a setback in the Grade 3 Prix Aguado as their Walk In The Park colt, Wild Bill Hickok, finished a distant seventh behind Leopard du Berlais.
THE spotlight switched to flat racing at Saint-Cloud on Monday, when last term’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe runner-up Aventure prompted trainer Christophe Ferland to give her the ‘best I’ve trained’ label after a comfortable length and a quarter defeat of Survie in the Prix Corrida, a Group 2 fillies’ contest run over a mile two furlongs and 110 yards.
Aventure will have the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud as her summer target prior to a second crack at the Arc.