IT was a messy race, with five inexperienced two-year-olds either floundering in the soft ground or getting in each other’s way, but Joseph O’Brien will care not one jot about that after Green Sense rewarded his canny race -planning with a famous victory in the Group 2 Goffs Prix Robert Papin at Chantilly last Sunday.

While most other Irish trainers were concentrating on the Curragh, or more specifically the impossible task of denying his all-powerful father, Aidan, in the Irish Oaks or the Railway Stakes, Joseph sneaked Green Sense overseas in the search of some cut in the ground.

He ended up looking like a genius as, much more at home on an officially ‘soft’ surface here than she had been on the sun-baked turf of Royal Ascot, she crossed the line a neck clear of Karl Burke’s Super Soldier with the third foreign raider, the Archie Watson-trained Tadej, another neck adrift in third and the two domestic hopes, Imperial Me Cen and Moojeed, fully three lengths behind the trio of invaders.

Tadej made the running and stuck on well against the inside rail while Green Sense was edging into the centre of the course having been delivered to challenge by her jockey Maxime Guyon with under two furlongs to race.

Late burst

Straightened up, Green Sense took over in front 200 yards from the line and held off the late burst of the runner-up, who did not enjoy the clearest of runs despite the small field.

The result continued a fabulous run of results for fillies by Tally-Ho Stud’s exciting first season sire Starman, following on from the exploits of two other pattern race heroines, Venetian Sun and Lady Iman.

“Green Sense was a bit disappointing at Ascot but we were hopeful that she would be able to turn things around today,” O’Brien said. “Now the obvious place to go with her is the Cheveley Park Stakes and she might come back to France before then to have a crack at the Prix Morny.”

Green Sense carries the double green silks of owners Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, who are better known in jumping circles thanks to the exploits of the likes of El Fabiolo, Bristol De Mai and Footpad.

But their racing manager, the bloodstock agent Anthony Bromley, has achieved some exceptional results on the flat as well over the past couple of campaigns, and hit the jackpot last term for Munir and Souede when finding them the Queen Mary Stakes winner, Relief Rally.

Bromley, who bought Green Sense as a yearling at the Goffs Orby Sale for €90,000 after she was bred in Co Limerick by the HRI chairman Nicky Hartery, said: “She did not let herself down on the firm ground in the Albany Stakes last time but Joseph has always held her in high regard and it’s really exciting for Simon and Isaac to win a race like this. It was an exceptional piece of placing by Joseph and his team.”

Confirmed mudlark

The recent rainfall also made a big impact on one of the two Group 3 events on Sunday’s card, the Prix Messidor, as this mile contest was won by the confirmed mudlark Quddwah. A five-year-old son of Kingman trained in England by Simon and Ed Crisford, Quddwah was having just the ninth start of his career, but has now won two-thirds of those rare appearances.

After Callum Shepherd had guided him to a convincing two-and-a-half-length defeat of the front-running Geography, Crisford senior said: “He’s a very good horse when he gets his ground and, depending on how he comes out of the race, we could consider a return trip for the Prix Jacques le Marois or the Prix du Moulin.”

The overseas visitors were denied a clean sweep of the feature races when Ralph Beckett’s Cathedral, the odds-on favourite for the Group 3 Darley Prix Chloe, could manage no better than second in this nine furlong test for three-year-old fillies, two and a half lengths behind the pillar-to-post winner, Rosa Salvaje.

“Being allowed to do her own thing in front has made all the difference,” trainer Christopher Head revealed afterwards about Rosa Salvaje, who had refused to settle in behind when finishing ninth in the Prix de Diane on her previous outing.