No one does the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe better than Andre Fabre. With eight wins in Europe’s great autumn feature, France’s master trainer is out on his own, ahead of any other trainer, jockey, or owner: his record is the envy of all, not least the Japanese horsemen and fans who will watch Sunday’s contest with bated excitement and guarded anticipation.
Japan’s Shin Emperor has shortened in the betting markets and has attracted a notable increase in media attention since his eye-catching run in the G1 Irish Champion Stakes almost three weeks ago, while Al Riffa, to be ridden by Japan’s greatest jockey, Yutaka Take, is a big contender, too.
“It’s a great racing nation, Japan. They have improved, they have fantastic breeding and (Mr Yahagi) who has this horse (Shin Emperor) looks a top-class trainer,” Fabre told Idol Horse, adding: “Asia is the future for racing, and the present as well.”
But Fabre, a couple of months short of his 79th birthday, is still the undisputed king of Longchamp’s most famous feature and he is still as keen as ever to win the race. “Of course,” the desire remains strong, he said, and this time he has the race favourite, Sosie, plus his talented support acts, the top mare Mqse De Sevigne and the high-class stayer Sevenna’s Knight.
Sosie is one of those slower-developing three-year-olds Fabre has so expertly guided to Arc glory. Six of the trainer’s eight winners have triumphed in their Classic year, and while Peintre Celebre and Hurricane Run both won Derbies en route, Trempolino, Carnegie, Sagamix and Rail Link took a less precocious path, maturing into a Prix Niel victory on the way to peaking in the big one.
The Niel is Fabre’s most trusted prep. Five of those aforementioned three-year-olds won the race, and the one that didn’t, Peintre Celebre, was beaten at odds of 1-10 but made amends emphatically three weeks later with one of the most impressive Arc wins ever seen, a five-length victory over Pilsudski, with the likes of Swain, Helissio and Borgia behind.
Sosie has similarities to those slower maturing types yet was forward enough to make it to a Derby: a conditions race win in April, stepping into the Classic mix when third in the G1 Prix du Jockey Club, a G1 Grand Prix de Paris score, and then a leap to the head of the Arc market with a table-turning Niel win over his Prix du Jockey Club conqueror, Look De Vega.
“Sosie won nicely in the prep race against the younger horses, so he still has to face the older horses, but the three-year-old generation doesn’t seem to be first quality,” Fabre said of the Wertheimer family’s homebred and his peers, before adding coolly, “He’s fine, he’s fine,” when asked about the colt’s progress since that impressive last run.
The master has seen and achieved more than enough in his time to know the folly of getting carried away on the wings of hype and expectation.
His observation about the three-year-olds fits with the widely-held view that this year’s Arc is an open affair. Europe’s standout colt of the Classic generation, City Of Troy, will head to California instead for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and Look De Vega’s defeat was deflating even though word from Chantilly is that he is working handsomely into the weekend. Meanwhile, no horse has grasped the older division and made it theirs.
That being so, Fabre has no qualms about stepping Edouard de Rothschild’s Mqse De Sevigne up to a mile and a half for the first time at age five. The daughter of the high-class miler Siyouni has won four from four this term, three at Group 1 level: a nine-furlong victory over the boys in the Prix d’Ispahan, then wins against her own sex in the Prix Rothschild at a mile and the Prix Jean Romanet at a mile and a quarter.
Mares were rare winners of the race when Zarkava scored in 2008, but since 2011 mares have won the race eight times, and seven times in eight years between 2011 and 2018. Given that Alpinista was the last mare to win, in 2022, after three colts had won in succession, perhaps Mqse De Sevigne will swing the balance back to the ladies.
“She has been a good mare already. She has a good turn of foot, she is experienced, has already won races at Longchamp, and the ground is not a concern for her, so I think she has a good chance,” Fabre said.
The mare is by a Group 1 seven-furlong winner, but she is a half-sister to Meandre, a Group 1 winner at the Arc distance that also stayed two miles, and his sire was an old Fabre runner, Slickly.
“There were some questions about the distance, whether she would stay or not, and I might be wrong, but I think the extra distance will be an advantage for her,” he said. “Slickly was a miler, and the Arc mare is by Siyouni, so I have little doubt about the distance.”
While the Prix Niel has served Fabre so well, all eight of his Arc winners raced at the trials meeting three weeks out from the big one: Subotica was second in the Prix Foy as a four-year-old, and the trainer’s most recent Arc hero, Waldgeist, won that race on his way to Arc success in 2019.
That being so, Mqse De Sevigne doesn’t fit the usual Fabre template: her latest race was at Deauville on August 18. That doesn’t bother Fabre, though.
“I didn’t want to over-race her, she runs well when she’s fresh and she raced twice at Deauville which is quite demanding as a course. She has prepared well at home and she’s in good shape.”
The 31-time champion of France was keen not to leave out Sevenna’s Knight, a stayer he holds in some regard.
“He’s the best staying horse in France, perhaps, but he has a good turn-of-foot, good acceleration,” he said. “I was hoping for some more rain for him, but we will see if it rains in the days before the race – if it’s going to be soft – because he enjoys it. Not that he is not good on good ground, but it will slow the other horses. He’s going to run well, he’s a good horse.”
But horses that win over a mile and three quarters, up to the best part of two miles, as the four-year-old did in the G3 Prix Gladiateur last time, do not win the Arc: top class stayers like Westerner, Vinnie Roe and Oscar Schindler have run with merit in the last 30 years, but winning is another matter.
Then again, Marienbard’s four-year-old season saw him campaign over long distances before a return to a mile and a half as a five-year-old brought Arc glory.
Another master trainer, Ireland’s Aidan O’Brien has Los Angeles leading his probable line-up of runners, but if the rain stays away and the ground is dry for the time of year, he could pitch Deep Impact’s six-time Group 1-winning son Auguste Rodin into the Ballydoyle vanguard.
The Ralph Beckett-trained Bluestocking won the fillies and mares trial, the G1 Prix Vermeille, but she’s no Treve, nor a Zarkava, the last two to gain Arc glory via that route.
Meanwhile, Al Riffa carries Japanese hopes via his jockey and owner, even if he is trained in Ireland by Joseph O’Brien. There’s a saying among Japanese fans that, ‘If Take wins, Japan wins,’ and the iconic jockey has been the greatest advert for Japanese racing there has ever been. His quest for a first Arc win, if successful, will raise the roof not only at Longchamp but also at Tokyo racecourse where the JRA will broadcast the race on the big screen.
The same goes for Shin Emperor who is reported to be doing well and has garnered much media attention in recent days. Yahagi’s representative Hiroshi Ando told Idol Horse the colt will have a normal few days leading into the race, work-wise, with a light gallop on Wednesday morning.
Yahagi has conquered majors in the United States, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Australia. Europe is his last frontier and the Arc is the biggest conquest for him as well as for Take and Japanese racing as a whole.
Sunday’s Arc could be a history-maker, the race that makes up for the frustrations and heart-breaking near-misses of past Japanese raids, the one to banish the pain and heal the scars of Deep Impact, El Condor Pasa, and Orfevre. Or it could be yet another win for the incomparable Fabre.
