Three Arc trials... but just the one exceptional performance

The AntePoster was pretty annoyed for most of Saturday.

France Galop did not (to our knowledge) report going conditions at any point that day. This after the going data had been published as 3.9 on the penetrometer on Wednesday, 3.7 on Thursday, and 3.6 on Friday. Drying...but steepness of the trajectory unclear.

Things became much clearer on Sunday morning. By this point, the penetrometer reading had collapsed to 3.3: "bon souple" allegedly, but expected to dry back to "bon souple à bon" by race time. For those unfamiliar with the nuances of French going descriptions, the common practice (applied by The AntePoster and others) is to "subtract one", i.e. if the French say it’s "bon souple" (literally "good soft") you can expect it to be broadly "good" in EN groundspeak.

So this was already decent good ground – at worst – on Sunday morning, many hours before racing started. And as racing got underway on a warm and breezy day, it quickly became apparent that the ground had dried to (quite literally, as it turned out) record-breaking levels.

Nor did we have to wait for the Arc trials to find that out. The two races that kicked off the card – for 2yo colts and fillies respectively – delivered data that was anything but ambigous:

• Prix la Rochette (7 furlongs): Run in 1:19.39. No horse had broken the 1:20 mark since the race was re-distanced in 2001.

  
  

• Prix d'Aumale (8 furlongs): Run in 1:36.57. No horse had broken the 1:37 mark since records for this race started being kept (as far as we can find anyway) in 1988.

So enough of the backdrop, what about the three Arc trials themselves?

PRIX VERMEILLE (3.50 p.m. local time)

The fastest of the trials, run in 2:25.46; indeed, this was the fastest Vermeille on record.

The winner, Friendly Soul from the Gosden stable, was trying 12 furlongs for the first time. Not for the first time in her career she decided to go forward, leading for most of the race. At one point, she and (complete outsider) Composing were a good five lengths clear of the chasing pack.

The bare finishing-position data shows that the Gosden mare held on to win narrowly from Pink Panthera (this one did stay, we had our grave doubts, we were wrong), followed by the Graffard duo of Sunly and Rabbit's Foot, the former having got off to a terrible start and suffering trouble in running for good measure.

But don't be fooled by the close finish. The sectional data for this race is quite startling: Having run 1:27.34 for the first seven furlongs (more than a second faster than the Prix Niel, and in a different time zone to the Prix Foy), Friendly Soul continued to surge through decent fractions, only fading in the last 200 metres.

This was truly a tour de force. The first six home at the finish line were placed as follows four furlongs from home: 1-9-12-10-11-13. To put it another way, all of the horses who occupied the first eight places after eight furlongs of this very fast race (apart from the winner) filled the last seven places at the finishing line.

Make no mistake about it, this was the performance of the day. Sunly was the one that went in every notebook, but time analysis makes it clear that the winner ran a quite extraordinary race.

Arc implications: While not entered in the Arc, Friendly Soul's Vermeille win does give her automatic entry... if connections choose to accept it. However, in the immediate aftermath, Thady Gosden – a man who gives little away to the antepost punter – politely observed to the interviewer that the choice of Arc and Opera (of which she is a previous winner) would be "a nice conversation to have" [with owner George Strawbridge]. The softness of the ground would be a factor in that decision. Since then, racing manager Tom Goff has also mentioned Champions Day at Ascot and the Breeders Cup at Keeneland. No shortage of options then, some of which might be combined.

The reasons not to go to the Arc are pretty understandable. For one thing, Friendly Soul must have had a very hard race, while in addition the Arc will likely be run on different ground to Sunday's. The Gosden 5-year-old does have a soft-ground Opera win against her own gender on her CV so a return to that contest would be understandable, even though it’s far from a slam dunk that this mare can beat Aventure.

We would like to see Friendly Soul go for the Arc. She put up the performance of the weekend on the clock, and is unbeaten in two Group 1s at Longchamp. Were she to line up, she would be a fraction of the 40/1 currently quoted by William Hills, who are clearly sceptial about her participation. A huge price, but of course one fraught with risk.

Of those who followed the winner home, eyecatcher Sunly is a possible Graffard third-string for the Arc, but connections are also toying with the Prix Royallieu, a Group 1 for fillies and mares run over a mile and six furlongs on the same weekend, so the 25/1 doesn’t appeal at this stage.

Runner-up Pink Panthera (no price) does not have an Arc entry and her participation “will be discussed”. However, even her trainer admits that 12 furlongs “stretches her right to the limit” so the Opera is an obvious alternative. Either way, the prospect of soft ground would surely be a huge negative for this top-of-the-ground filly in either race (was withdrawn from the Prix Jean Romanet due to going concerns).

PRIX NIEL (5.00 p.m. local time)

Run in 2:27.70; only the 2007 edition has been run faster (by just 0.10 seconds).

Leaving aside the dismal performance of favourite Benvenuto Cellini (who could not even beat outsider Chiefland), this was the other fast 12-furlong trial of the day, run just a quarter of a second slower than the Vermeille and won by Varandir, last seen finishing just behind Maltese Cross in the Grand Prix de Paris.

Curiously, despite being a run a full second slower than the fillies/mares race over the first seven furlongs, here too the pace collapsed, insofar as the front three (with five furlongs to go) occupied the last three places at the finish line.

It's not quite apparent why that should be. Montreal aside – who looked like he might have stolen the race at one point but was clearly running on empty in the final furlong – it seems most likely that the efforts of those at the front of the chasing pack (Benvenuto Cellini and Zaraki) took their toll in the long sprint for home, but equally that pair also looked to be running keenly earlier on, and that may also have kyboshed their chances. Zaraki in particular went out like a light.

The margins separating the first three home (Varandir, Alam, Pearled Majesty) were ultimately fairly narrow (1.25 lengths, 1 length), so given the rather strange nature of this race we were initially rather reluctant to shower the praise on the winner alone. However, racing manager Nemone Routh suggested Varandir was carrying a bit of excess weight and would come on for the run, so the Aga Khan colt's superiority might have been greater than it looked.

Arc implications: Aga Khan Studs do of course have a horse called Daryz for the Arc, so The AntePoster’s immediate feeling after the Prix Niel was that this son of Zarak might be a doubt for the first Sunday in October. However, when interviewed Nemone Routh expressed herself in favour of letting this “entire” take his place in this stallion-making race, a sentiment then echoed by Graffard himself in a later interview. The general feeling among connections is that this colt will handle softer conditions well, so all things considered the 20/1 available on Varandir with William Hill looks very fair indeed.

As for the second and third, Alam (best price 40/1) looks likely to go to the Arc too providing the Niel didn’t leave a mark (“If he recovers well he’s likely to line up … he goes on all types of ground, but equally I wouldn’t like to see the ground truly heavy”, whereas Pearled Majesty (66/1) remains only a possible for the race. The latter is also entered in the Prix Dollar on Arc weekend, as well as Ascot’s Champion Stakes just two weeks later (“we’ll see how he is and have a look at the options”). Whatever the course connections plot, Pearled Majesty looks to us like a talented colt who may not have been best suited to the way the Prix Niel unfolded.

PRIX FOY (5.35 p.m. local time)

Run in 2:30.89; by far the slowest of the trials (more than five seconds slower than both the Vermeille and the Niel). Despite the very fast ground, no less than ten 10 editions since the turn of the century have been run faster.

With a very small field and no confirmed front runner (a task that might have been performed by Uthred, but that one chose to hold back), this turned into a classic French “crawl-and-sprint” type of race.

And boy did they crawl. The first seven furlongs were covered in a languid 1:35.13, which is equivalent to a half furlong or so slower than the Niel and the Vermeille. For Daryz, a horse that both trainer and racing manager had warned was a little short of full fitness, this "racecourse gallop" could hardly have worked out better with a view to the first Sunday in October.

We knew this son of Sea The Stars was capable of sizzling sectionals from his awesomely impressive wins over shorter distances back in the spring (Prix Ganay and Prix Aga Khan IV, the former saw Daryz break 32 seconds for the last three furlongs), and the way the Prix Foy was run allowed him to show off that sparkling turn of foot. Indeed, the clock for the Foy winner's penultimate furlong was stopped at 10.49 – the only furlong on the card to break the 10.50 mark. That's quite something for a race meeting that featured a Group 1 over a mile.

Bay City Roller was passed easily enough by the Arc champion in the straight, but didn’t let that one get away, crossing the line less than two lengths adrift. In our view, he ran very well on ground that was faster than he really cares for.

Arc implications: The 10/3 available on Daryz for the Arc earlier on the Sunday had already been trimmed to 11/4 before the gates opened for he Prix Foy in anticipation of a resurgence from the defending Arc champion, and the price has now shrunk to just 9/4.

Glowing praise was liberally bestowed on Graffard’s star in the press and social media after the Prix Foy, with many observers being wowed by this performance and penning different versions of the "how far does he win by" line. We take a more dispassionate view. While the Foy certainly proved that Daryz was healthy and firing on all cylinders, a (less than) two-length beating of a horse who almost certainly found Sunday’s ground on the fast side does not look like form to get carried away with, not least with the lowly-rated Uthred just three lengths further back in third, despite being disadvantageously positioned given the way the race unfolded.

Of course, Daryz was hardly asked for maximum effort on Sunday, but in advance of the all-important draw we consider 9/4 to be an unappealing price. Apart from anything else, it's worth bearing in mind that the Arc champ has never been asked to run in truly atrocious ground (last year's ground has actually been classified as "good to soft" retrospectively by Timeform). Who knows what early October will bring to the French capital.

On the other hand, Bay City Roller’s connections can also be well satisfied with their horse’s first run in three months (unraced since his Coronation Cup victory), not least as this son of New Bay looks sure to relish the likelier easier going when the Foy 1-2 meet again on the first Sunday in October. Viewed through that lens, the decision by some bookmakers to ease Bay City Roller to 20/1 for the Arc looks rather ill-judged to us, although an Indian Summer would alter that perspective.