France’s Newest Training Duo Eye Tilt At Royal Ascot With Breakthrough Winner

[Wandering Eyes]

Talk about a dream start. Louis Blanchet and Ruben Elbase, the latest duo to strike up a training partnership in France, couldn't have wished for a better beginning to their venture when sending out Nargiz to win a maiden at Pornichet racecourse last Thursday.

The daughter of Lope De Vega carried the distinguished colours of Gerard Augustin-Normand to victory and now the training duo of Blanchet, who up until this point had been working as an assistant to his brother and trainer Xavier, along with Elbase, a former owner, are eyeing an audacious tilt at Royal Ascot with their breakthrough winner.

Blanchet said, “Fantastic. It was the target for us to have a winner quickly with the quality of horses that we have. So yes, we had a fantastic start with Nargiz and she won really easily as well so we could look for a Listed race with her now. We also had a very good third with Canneza (Siyouni) in a Class 3 at Deauville on Friday. She is a filly we bought with Johnny McKeever for €180,000 at the sales and looks a lovely prospect. She finished extremely fast so I think we have two very nice mares at home. We will target a race at Royal Ascot with one – if not both of them – so it is a very exciting start for us.”

The Chantilly-based Blanchet, 28, is perhaps best known in his native France for his role in supporting his brother Xavier, himself an up-and-coming trainer. The former amateur jockey has also spent time working for the sales company Osarus as well as spending three years with Mark Johnston in Britain before enjoying a six-month stint with Francis Graffard. In short, he has crammed a lot in and is mature beyond his years in realising that the landscape of training is changing. 

He explained, “Being a trainer is not what it was 20 years ago so, from my point of view, I had been watching some of the other training partnerships in France and the one that inspired me the most was Amanda Zetterholm and Noel George. I was thinking about training for the past two years. I had been working as an assistant trainer with my brother during that time but always wanted to set up my own business. When you have a partner in business, you can split the tasks and grow faster. If you are going to progress as a trainer, you need somebody who is very skillful with horses and another person who finds new clients and looks after the marketing and the communication as well as all of the other responsibilities a trainer has to deal with away from the hands-on work with the horses. So, I wanted to find someone who could deal with the clients and let me deal with the horses. When I met Ruben, I thought he was probably the perfect person to do the partnership with.”

He added, “It works really well with Ruben being based in Paris. There are many occasions when, because I am so busy with the horses, I miss out on meeting clients, going to dinner, functions or whatever. Now, with Ruben a partner in the business, he can go and represent our stable and potentially attract new people to our stable, which is extremely important. This is the plan.”

Elbase, 36, is not your typical trainer. In fact, he is the first to admit that he brings very little to the table when it comes to buying, training or even placing the horses within the stable. Instead, his role revolves around entertaining clients and attracting prospective owners to the yard. Something Blanchet could not fit into his busy schedule but equally important to any thriving racing stable. 

Elbase said, “Launching this partnership is the dream of my life. This is a big thing for us and we are really excited. We have worked really hard for this and are looking forward to the future. This is an innovative concept to training partnerships in that we both have clearly defined roles. It's not unoriginal to see training partnerships in France but usually they are with two trainers. I was a long-time owner and I had the majority of my horses with Louis in recent years. We have enjoyed a very good relationship together and I can remember him telling me one year ago that he wanted to branch out and launch his own training stable in Chantilly. He asked me if I was interested in being his partner. It's very different because I am not a trainer so I was not sure if we could have a partnership or not if I did not have a training licence.”

He added, “However, we discovered that if the main owner of the company is the trainer, then it is not a problem and we can do that. I am based in Paris, where I will concentrate on meeting and attracting owners, while Louis will look after all of the training and the horses in Chantilly. I think this could open up the possibility for new racing fans and owners who want to be involved in this side of the business.”

After enjoying a dream start with their first runners last week, Blanchet admitted to being quietly optimistic to what the summer might bring. He expects the stable's numbers to rise to around 20 horses in its pomp.

He said, “We have eight horses in training at the moment and three of those are two-year-olds. We have five more two-year-olds on their way to us from Ireland, the UK and France. We have a few other three-year-olds in pre-training so we should have around 20 horses here in the next couple of months. I love working with the younger horses and we bought five yearlings at the sales last year. We also bought some fillies at the breeding stock sales and, if we can add a bit of value to them this season, that would be great. We have a nice Stud Of Man filly called Lady Tedsmore, who we are aiming at a Listed race next, and she came from the breeze-ups so we could return to that market again this year.”

Elbase concluded, “The sales are pretty new to me so I am learning about all of the chaos involved in finding the new horses. It is really important to be at the sales in Arqana, Tattersalls or Goffs. The sales provide a good opportunity for trainers to meet people and attract owners. Louis is usually very busy at the sales so it can be hard to keep owners in the loop with what is going on. But when I am there, we can strike a good balance between working the sales hard and entertaining clients, so hopefully it can work well in the future. We can share the job together.”

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