ENGLISH TEXTS
“ Changing Times is unfortunately empty. It is very likely that she will return to Ivanhowe. Like him, Lord du Sud had already covered before arriving at the stud. It was also with Lord du Sud that the same family as It’ s Win O’ Clock produced Côtée Sud, second to L’ Autonomie in the Prix Renaud du Vivier( Gr. 1).”
BREEDING
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MAKING FRENCH-TRAINED 2-YEAR-OLD BACK TO THEIR BEST
BY JOCELYN DE MOUBRAY
France’ s two year old Group race season closed with the Prix Thomas Bryon, run for the first time on the psf at Chantilly in mid November, ending very much with a whimper rather than a bang as the Group 3 attracted only six runners and three trained in Britain dominated their three French trained rivals. The winner, Godolphin’ s Al Zanati, is probably a useful performer but this was hardly a successful experiment.
It is a self-evident truth that French trained horses are only rarely competitive in the best European two year olds races, and even at a lower level struggle to be competitive with those trained in England and Ireland. French trained horses won eleven of the France’ s twenty one juvenile Group races in 2025,( 43 %), and none of the five Group 1 races. Over the last fifteen years French trained horses have won 25 of the 74 Group 1 two year old races run in France, 34 %, but only 3( 20 %) of the fifteen run over the last five years. A French trained horse has not won the Prix Morny since Earthlight in 2019, the Prix Jean Luc Lagardere since Sealiway in 2020, the Criterium International since Ectot in 2013 and the Criterium de Saint Cloud since McFancy in 2019. The only two year old Group 1 winners for French based trainers during this period were Vertical Blue, Blue Rose Cen, and Zelie, all in the Prix Marcel Boussac, and Belbek in the Qatar Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère 2022. The ratings tell a similar story as on the Racing Post’ s scale during the last five years only eight French trained two year olds were given a rating of 110 or higher, and a total of 28 a rating of 105 or higher, an average of fewer than six a year. It may seem to be inevitable these days that the best European two year olds are trained in England or Ireland but this was not always the case. As recently as 2015 sixteen French trained two year olds were given a rating of 105 or higher and go back as far as 1990 and there were 23 rated 110 or higher. 1990 was, of course, a different world but that year there were eleven two year olds rated 120 or higher, and six of these, Hector Protector, Pistolet Bleu, Lycius, Exit To Nowhere, Ganges and Masterclass were trained in France. Three of the six were trained by Francois Boutin and all apart from Pistolet Bleu were bred in Kentucky. In the years since no French based trainer has begun to match Boutin’ s success with two year olds, he won the equivalents of today’ s five French two year old Group 1’ s thirty times, as well of course as the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with Arazi. Boutin won the Prix de
La Salamandre twelve times in only twenty two years between 1972 and 1993. During this period the Salamandre, run over 1400 metres at Longchamp in mid September, was more often than not the best two year old race of the year and was won by such champions and significant horses for the breed as Giant’ s Causeway, Arazi, Machiavellian, Miesque, Miswaki and Blushing Groom. And yet when the French two year old Group program was transformed for the beginning of the twenty first Century the Salamandre was discarded, the Grand Criterium reduced to 1400 and brought forward to the Arc weekend and the Criterium International was introduced to be run over 1600 metres at Saint Cloud at the end of October. Times change, a different breed and type of horse race in France today compared with thirty years ago, and people come and go too, however, the program is the base of all racing and twenty five years after these changes were introduced with the specific aim of making French trained horses more competitive, it is time to admit that they have failed, and to look for ways to return to a system which worked. The thinking behind the changes introduced in 2001 was that as French trained two year olds were not prepared to be as forward as those in England and Ireland, even then the obsession with getting two year olds ready to run at Royal Ascot was well developed, so, if the best French two year old races were moved back in the calendar to early and late October, then French trained horses would be more competitive. The years before the changes were dominated
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