IRISH involvement may have been restricted to having bred all three big winners, but Sunday’s three pattern races on the final day of the August Deauville Festival produced a most cosmopolitan bunch of winning connections.

The showpiece event was the Group 2 Lucien Barriere Grand Prix de Deauville over one mile, four furlongs and 110 yards and, despite persistent rain, it produced arguably the month’s best finish. The nine-year-old William Haggas-trained gelding Al Aasy - close to retirement after his last run,finishing only third in a Goodwood Group 3 he had won in the two previous campaigns - overtook four rivals in the last 100 yards to score by a short neck from Chestnut Rocket with Arrow Eagle, Mazzala and Global Health all close behind. Remarkably, this represents the high-water mark in the career of the Shadwell Estate Company-owned Al Aasy, who first set foot on a racecourse back in 2019 and came within a neck of Group 1 glory when touched off in the Coronation Cup at Epsom two years later.