ENGLISH TEXTS part-time ones whose job is to fill in holes on the track. On top of that, we call on temporary workers when needed.” In Pau, preparing and dressing the tracks is a huge task.“ It takes almost six weeks, with six to eight people, to put up four kilometres of running rails, flags and foam protection for trees …” The most time-consuming job is dressing the obstacles, painstakingly done using traditional methods. No synthetic material in Pau! The gorse and heather used to build the fences are 100 % natural; Jean Brouqueyre travels with his team to the Landes forest to gather over a thousand bundles! Preparing the bull-finches for their festive attire takes two weeks for a team of four:“ We have to make pre-holes in the clay mounds and cut each branch to size. It is obviously costly, but if we opted for synthetic obstacles, we would sanitise our course and lose our identity,” the director asserts. Every obstacle has its replica at the Sers training centre, also dressed with gorse or heather sourced from Poitou. At Cagnes, the daily challenge is hosting up to a thousand horses in training, between the“ resident” trotters and all the visitors. But the Côte d’ Azur racecourse is well drilled.“ In the morning we have medical and security staff to monitor the movement of horses on the grounds,” explains director Thomas Roucayrol. Trotters and Thoroughbreds share the premises, each on their own tracks and in good cooperation.“ The internal rules are very strict, but everyone respects them. On the opening day of the meeting, the first of December, the first race was at 11:50 a. m. So the tracks were closed from 10:30 a. m. This cuts training time in half, which is a major challenge for professionals. In such cases, we light the tracks so they can be used before dawn.” The racecourse is a world of its own where people work, sleep, and coexist.“ It’ s both friendly and stressful,” says Yannick Fouin.“ We’ re a bit under a bell jar; we talk horses all day … Some tell me that Cagnes is like a sunny holiday, but that’ s not my experience at all! Here, horses go out every day, we ride them in the morning and hand-walk them in the evening because there are no horse walkers. We never let them go. Staff love coming, but by the end everyone is exhausted and wants to take holidays!” Post-meeting staffing is therefore delicate to manage.“ The meeting atmosphere” is also present in Pau.“ There’ s a café in the middle of the boxes; we meet there in the evenings. It’ s nice not to have to drive back home,” says Anne-Sophie Pacault.
Meetings Facing Increasing Competition Meetings used to operate“ in a closed circuit.”“ We shut down Paris and went to Cagnes,” recalls Yannick Fouin. Today, it is no longer possible to focus on one place only. Jockeys travel from one racecourse to another; many trainers with boxes in Cagnes keep some ammunition for Pau, and vice versa. The two tracks have totally different profiles: Cagnes, in jump racing, favours fast horses of often intermediate ability, while Pau, with its heavy ground, big obstacles and cross-country course reserved for the brave, is more selective. Pierre Laperdrix analyses:“ Twenty years ago, we went south to run because there was no all-weather track and no races north of the Loire. But those days are gone. Until 2014, Cagnes and Pau held the exclusive rights to Flat racing, but now Chantilly and Deauville both race in winter. Fourteen meetings will take place there during the Cagnes meeting this year.” Organising meetings near training centres seems sensible, to spare horses and humans travel. Cagnes, affected by a drop in field sizes, had to adapt.“ It’ s the only racecourse in France where we can race on turf in winter. Since 2024 we have therefore increased the number of races on this surface from 40 to 50 %. We also redesigned the programme’ s philosophy by adjusting dates of certain races,” says the France Galop programme manager. The goal is for Cagnes’ races to blend better into the wider French Flat calendar. The strategy seemed to bear fruit last year with a 9 % decrease in races with small fields, but Roucayrol had, in early December, more empty boxes for the Flat than requests— some foreign trainers had not, or not yet, decided to return.“ One trainer fewer with twenty or thirty horses immediately leaves a real gap!” the director worries. The jump meeting at Cagnes was full with 380 boxes occupied and around thirty trainers. In Pau—“ a jump meeting offering some Flat opportunities,” according to Pierre Laperdrix— fewer boxes are booked than before.“ Twenty years ago, we had 450 horses on site for the winter; now it’ s about 300,” explains Jean Brouqueyre. This is not a real decline: many professionals commute for each race, helped
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