Class Enables Us To Celebrate Hidden Mastery Of Trainers

[Wandering Eyes]

Evidently the idea behind the gilding of the new grandstand here is not to indulge the opulent tastes of wealthy patrons from the Middle East, but that it should merge romantically with the autumn leaves of the Bois de Boulogne. As it happens, on a morning when the adjacent Seine exhaled a brooding mist into the drizzle, on arrival it sooner resembled Dijon mustard than gold. Perhaps the edifice will obtain a more vulgar aspect at sunnier Arcs. For now, however, it seemed a charmingly self-effacing aspiration: to spend all that money on the premise that you shouldn’t be able to see the result on its most important weekend of the year.

Barely less camouflaged, in the event, was Sea Of Class (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) for much of Europe’s biggest race, hidden away by James Doyle at the rear of the field until breaking through in the straight, as thunderous and abrupt as a falling branch, with an agonising thrust that just failed to reel in Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {GB}) and Frankie Dettori. No less concealed from view, however, was the extreme fragility of the rope walked by the winner in becoming the eighth dual winner of the Arc.

For while the race appeared to be dominated by the vivid fortunes of the two jockeys involved in the finish—one having played his cards with the audacity you might expect to have been earned only by winning the Arc, like the other, six times—this was sooner a story of two outstanding training performances.

Because when we see these horses emblazon their talent in a great race like this, it is the equivalent of spring blossom or indeed the glorious kaleidoscope of the fall. We must never forget the long, patient groundwork that roots their fulfilment.

Getting Enable here had clearly brought John Gosden towards the limit of the mastery that has qualified him as the dominant British trainer of his day. She did look incredibly well, her quarters hard and glistening, but her trainer and his team knew that lustre to be skin-deep. Gosden confessed afterwards that her precarious journey here—taking in just one race, on an undemanding synthetic surface, in recuperating from her knee injury—had been rendered still more challenging by a temperature that caused her to miss a crucial gallop. In effect, the last rung of the ladder was missing and only her inborn courage and competitive spirit enabled her to make the jump onto the roof.

But if the last 100 metres, to Gosden, felt “an eternity”, then to connections of Sea Of Class they lapsed with cruel haste. Of course, the winner’s fatigue visually inflated the energy of her pursuer. Anyone aggrieved by Doyle’s dashing solution to such a ghastly draw should go back and look at his similarly magisterial ride in the Irish Oaks. This was one of those rare occasions, in fact, where the unavailing inspiration of the vanquished demanded that the plaudits be divided equally between first and second.

You would not know that such a bonny filly, a forelock flicked prettily over a headcollar braided in her owner’s colours, could house either such a lethal edge: whether her acceleration, which took her past 17 out of 18 of the most accomplished Thoroughbreds in Europe, or a personality full of challenges to William Haggas and his team.

Haggas has always been the most dextrous of trainers, in terms of knowing how far to push his charges: both in terms of their physical and mental tuning, and in the assignments he sets them. Few others would have been far-sighted enough to turn down Epsom, where Sea Of Class would have been among the favourites, on the basis that the experience could turn her the wrong way. Yesterday’s stunning effort represented the spectacular dividend of that judgement. As they round here: reculer pour mieux sauter. (That is: take a step back to get a better run at your jump.)

There were tears in the camp, but there could be no recriminations. Speaking even as Dettori was bringing the acclaim of the crowd around the paddock to a new fervour, Haggas showed typical class in his detached assessment of the melodrama. Resisting any temptation to the slightest self-pity, he assured Doyle that he should simply be proud of his role in the filly’s continued fulfilment. But that is still truer of Haggas himself.

The Tsui family’s exit from Ireland dismayed many onlookers but the one guarantee was that Haggas himself would conduct himself with no less dignity, and apply himself with no less skill, than the great man who had trained this filly’s sire to win the 2009 running.

Sea The Stars (Ire) (Cape Cross {Ire}) was, of course, bred from the Tsui family’s epoch-making mare, the 1993 winner Urban Sea (Miswaki). If destiny is summoning their silks to a third Arc in three generations, then it is clearly going to tease them a little first. But they can comfort themselves that there is a reason why excellence repeats itself here: witness Enable herself, in emulating such great names as Ribot; Dettori, who professed himself more nervous about his 30th Arc than any other; Gosden, who has now saddled the winner three times in four years; and, of course, the owner-breeder who has made such an indelible contribution to the modern breed. Prince Khalid, lest we forget, has now won the race as often as Dettori.

Some of us wonder whether he might have added another, moreover, had his greatest champion run here. Frankel (GB) (Galileo {Ire}), after all, had enough latent stamina to sire the winner of the G1 Prix du Cadran here on Saturday. That’s another laurel he has claimed ahead of Nathaniel (GB) (Galileo {Ire})—and you can just imagine the damage a Cadran winner would have done to him. He’ll have to content himself with a dual European champion from his first crop.

Nathaniel has a bunch of other stakes and group winners, of course, keeping up a ratio this year that more than matches many a sire standing at much higher fees. Doubtless the Group 1 success earlier on the card of Royal Marine (Ire) (Raven’s Pass)—a son of another stallion whose stats are scandalously disregarded by the market—will make equally little impression on commercial breeders. If I were an architect of grandstands, I might even suggest they can’t see the trees for the wood.

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