LAST Sunday Longchamp staged the two main trials for France’s one-mile classics (the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and Pouliches, which take place over the same course and distance on May 10th), and both races produced plenty of talking points.

Let’s start with the fillies in the Group 3 Prix de la Grotte, where the hot favourite was Christopher Head’s Green Spirit, a dual pattern race heroine who had not been seen since suffering her only defeat at the hands another unbeaten star in the shape of Aidan O’Brien’s leading Guineas contender, Diamond Necklace, in the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac in October.