ANOTHER weekend, two more brilliant winning performances by members of the French classes of 2020 and 2021.

For what seems like ages, we have watched the home team struggle to even be competitive in many of their top races.

Yet now, over a third of the way through the season, the French have successfully defended 80% of their domestic Group 1 prizes – when their win ratio for the entirety of the two previous campaigns had been a derisory 29%.

The French renaissance has been both highly comprehensive and highly unexpected. The form book is beginning to suggest that this year’s French classic crop, especially the colts, may simply be better than their contemporaries from around the rest of the continent, while the initial signs are that their top juveniles are pretty special too.

Yet, with the important exception of the horse currently in pole position to be crowned Europe’s Champion of 2023, the Prix du Jockey Club hero Ace Impact, the other seven home victories at the highest level have been supplied by trainers whose names are not Jean-Claude Rouget, Andre Fabre or even the heir apparent to their status as top dog among Gallic handlers, Francis Graffard.

The latest impressive home victories came on Bastille Day, last Friday evening, when Feed The Flame scorched the Longchamp turf to land the Group 1 Grand Prix de Paris, and at Chantilly two days later as Ramatuelle treated her four opponents in the Group 2 Prix Robert Papin with complete contempt.

Grand Prix de Paris (Group 1)

THE Grand Prix de Paris was run at a typically French tempo: a dash out of the stalls for a furlong or more, allowing a pecking order to be established, then gentle meander along until the accelerator is pressed approaching the final bend and a sprint for home.

Such a set-up should not suit a horse like Feed The Flame, who tends to be a bit dozy at the start, likes to sit out the back spotting the leaders a good few lengths, and then takes a while to engage top gear when his rider asks for his final effort.

Yet still he won, and won easily enough for jockey Cristian Demuro to enjoy the luxury of gesticulating with his whip over the final 50 yards to acknowledge the whoops of a holiday crowd.

Adelaide River, the Aidan O’Brien first string, produced another strong display to mirror his second place in the Irish Derby, this time a length adrift rather than the length and a half deficit he endured behind Auguste Rodin at the Curragh, while the Oaks heroine Soul Sister performed without obvious flaw, a further neck back in third.

It was a formful result, the first three in the betting filling the podium places, albeit not in the punters’ expected order, pulling three and a half lengths clear of the pack with the other Ballydoyle representative, Peking Opera, finishing seventh of the eight runners.

Leaps and bounds

It was widely agreed afterwards that Feed The Flame had come on in leaps and bounds for this step up to a mile and a half.

The fact that he was beaten by almost seven lengths in the Jockey Club, where he finished over three lengths behind the runner-up, pays a big compliment to the first two home that day, Ace Impact and Big Rock.

It was also a throwback result in terms of the successful owner-trainer combination. Jean-Louis Bouchard and Pascal Bary first hit the headlines almost 30 years ago, when teaming up to land the 1994 Jockey Club with Celtic Arms, and they repeated the feat twice in the following decade.

Now 70 years old, Bary had suffered a five-year drought since his previous Group 1 triumph, and afterwards was quick to scotch rumours of his impending retirement.

“Definitely not at the end of this season, maybe I will think about stopping at the end of 2024, we’ll see,” he revealed.

Too soon

“Christophe Soumillon [his regular rider, missing this time because he was serving a suspension], told me after his second start that Feed The Flame was more of a mile-and-a-half horse and that the Jockey Club might come too soon for him,” he added.

“I am also hopeful that he will be even better in the autumn and with a bit more cut in the ground.”

Without actually mentioning specific races, Bary conveyed a strong message with his usual charm that the traditional Prix Neil/Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe route would be the direction of travel for the rest of the season for his prized Kingman colt.

Ryan Moore, who partnered Adelaide River, reported with characteristic succinctness: “He’s run a good race and is still improving”, while Kieran Shoemark, who rode Soul Sister, said: “We didn’t go very fast, which probably suited us, and then she stayed on well without quite being able to peg back Ryan. The winner must be a very, very good colt.”

MOORE and O’Brien were forced to play second fiddle again with His Majesty in the Robert Papin 48 hours later, and the lead violinist here was a particularly tuneful one in the shape of the Justify filly Ramatuelle, who achieved more in scoring by four lengths off a dawdling pace than she had when landing the fast-run Group 3 Prix du Bois by an even bigger margin.

Owned by the former NBA basketball star Tony Parker and trained by Christopher Head, she is bred by Yeguada Centurion, the pseudonym for Spaniard Leopoldo Fernandez Pujals, who is also the owner-breeder of Head’s two crack three-year-olds, Big Rock and the dual classic victor Blue Rose Cen. She should prove nigh-on impossible to beat in next month’s Group 1 Prix Morny.

Plunder

The visitors did manage to plunder Sunday’s main supporting race, the Group 3 Prix Chloe, a-mile-and-a-furlong fillies and mares contest which went the way of the potentially Nassau Stakes-bound Gleneagles filly, Araminta, trained in Britain by Henry Candy.

But the Brits had to settle for the bridesmaid’s role in a pair of €74,100 Group 2 events on the Bastille Day undercard.

Firstly, the William Haggas-trained Crack Of Light came across the improving filly Rue Boissonade, who is in the care of Mikel Delzangles and could be one to look out for in the autumn, after a two-and-a-half-lenth score in the mile and a half Prix de Malleret.

Then Stephane Wattel’s six-year-old The Good Man finally landed a race at this level after suffering defeats in six previous attempts when defying Ralph Beckett’s River Of Stars by three-quarters of a length in the Prix Maurice de Nieuil over a mile and six furlongs.