What does British Champions Day have that the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe did not have? The answer, this year, is Almanzor, a superstar colt who looks the best of his generation and whose trainer, Jean-Claude Rouget, steered him away from the big race at Chantilly last Sunday in favour of Ascot next Saturday.
For a French trainer to make that decision seems a significant development for Champions Day, now in its sixth year since the backing of Qipco allowed its various classy races to be pulled together and made much more valuable. The Arc is still worth more than any of them and has almost a century of tradition on its side but Rouget is satisfied that he has made the right decision for his horse, and Ascot will be the livelier for it.
It would have been much easier for Rouget to aim at the French race, particularly after his Arc contender La Cressonniere suffered a setback in the previous week and had to be withdrawn. Her disappointed owner, Antonio Caro, also owns Almanzor. There was quite a widespread expectation that Almanzor would simply take her place at Chantilly, fuelled by the comments of the jockey Christophe Soumillon who said: “If you don’t go to the Arc with a horse like this, you’ll never go.”
Soumillon was speaking in the immediate aftermath of the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown, where, in the length of the home straight, he and Almanzor swept past one of the best fields ever assembled in Ireland. The runner-up that day was Found, who went on to win the Arc, leading to the obvious thought that Almanzor would have bagged the £2m prize if he had turned up and that Rouget, who has never won an Arc, must now regret his choice.
That is not the case. “No,” he says firmly when the question is put, “because it was impossible to do both races. We keep the target, the Champion Stakes.”
Distance is the issue for Rouget. The Ascot race is over a mile and a quarter, just as Almanzor’s past three wins have been, whereas the Arc would have required another quarter-mile. “Next year we can try a mile and a half with him,” he said.
He was not surprised to see Found following her Irish defeat with Arc success “because, for me, it’s a better distance for her”. That theory could be put to the test next Saturday, since Found may yet step back in distance for the Champion Stakes, for which she is 5-1 second-favourite behind Almanzor on 7-4. Evidently, it is not impossible for her to take in both races, but then few racehorses have been so able to hold their form through a succession of top-class races.
Rouget reports Almanzor recovered quickly from his trip to Ireland. “He is fine but you know how it is with horses, tomorrow he can be wrong. So I hope all the week will be OK. He has one more [bit of fast work] to do, on Monday.”
The colt provided Rouget with a first winner from his first runner in Ireland and he speaks with pleasure of the “lovely welcome, very nice people” he found at Leopardstown. The result was also welcome. “I thought to be placed more than to win, but he is improving for each race.”
Now 63, Rouget has had a long career but might be said to be in a similar position to Almanzor; while this year has been excellent, there may be better to come. His eight Group One victories in 2016 have included the French Derby and the French Oaks, while Qemah gave him a second consecutive Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot.
It might be said that Rouget’s situation has not stopped improving since he started as a trainer in 1978 with 15 horses, many of them jumpers, and won with his first runner. By the 1990s, he was known for mopping up hordes of low-level contests and set a French record of 242 wins in 1994 that still stands.
It was another decade and more before owners were sending him the kind of material that would allow him to compete regularly in the very best races, which had something to do with snobbery about his choice of training centre. While nearly all the top French trainers base themselves at Chantilly, Rouget remains at unfashionable Pau in the south-west, a seven-hour drive from the main tracks in Paris. The equivalent journey to Ascot would begin somewhere around Perth.
Part of him is still that man of 25 years ago who delighted in netting lots of little fish and at any moment he can tell you exactly how many winners there have been. It will be more by now but when we spoke on Friday it was 6,117, believed to be a European record. “I had one 10 minutes ago, at Angers.”
He can see past his own interests to assert that there are too many races in France. “If you eat too much every day, you are not hungry … The betting is going down.”
Somewhat trickier to explain is the failure of city folk to engage with the sport. “In France, it’s countryside people who go racing. In the big towns, like Toulouse, the racetrack is quite nice and in the middle of the city but you wouldn’t have 200 people. The job is not done to bring them to the racetracks. I love racing in England. For me, it’s a country, like Ireland, where people love racing.”
It is, perhaps, another reason why Jean-Claude Rouget will help to swell the 30,000 at Ascot.
