HEADMAN rocketed into contention for the Irish Champion Stakes with an exceptional performance to win the Group 2 €400,000 Prix Guillaume d’Ornano Haras du Logis Saint-Germain at Deauville on Thursday.

The above statement seems bizarre given that the son of Kingman only got up on the line to defeat Roman Candle by a head with Flop Shot, a horse he had trounced into a distant third in the Prix Eugene Adam seven weeks earlier, a mere half a length away in third.

Yet, given the way the race was run, Headman showed real brilliance to pull it out of the fire.

The officially ‘very soft’ ground was all against him, he reared up as the stalls opened meaning he was forced to race in last place, and that was absolutely the worst place to be given that this mile and a quarter contest was so slowly run that the winning time was seven seconds slower than Olmedo clocked 70 minutes later.

Perhaps, if the intended Irish runner, Up Helly Aa, had not been left marooned at Shannon Airport by a fire on a US Army plane which meant that all flights were suspended, there might have been a stronger gallop. Only Billy Lee, the man booked for Willie McCreery’s colt, can answer that question.

Headman overcame all this adversity to prevail, leaving his trainer, Roger Charlton to say: “It’s only his class that got him out of trouble today.

“He hated the ground, and nothing has come from off the pace this afternoon so it was a really good effort. Headman is growing up and, providing everything goes smoothly, he’ll run next in the Irish Champion. Whatever he does there, he’ll be a very good horse next year.”

Faster time

Olmedo’s much faster time had come when he beat the front-running British raider, Mountain Angel, by a length in the Group 3 Prix Gontaut-Biron Hong Kong Jockey Club, his first success since lifting the Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Poulains in May 2018.

It would have been fair to expect the Irish Champion, a race his connections won three years ago with Almanzor, to now be on his agenda too. But his trainer, Jean-Claude Rouget, feels that a mile and a quarter stretches his stamina and prefers a drop back to a mile for the Prix du Moulin.