ENGLISH TEXTS
by improved motorways and state-of-the-art horse trucks. Weekly shuttle runs operate between western France and Pau.“ A horse like Saint Godefroy, who is used to sleeping in the paddock, never stayed with us during the meeting. His trainer, Patrice Quinton, brings him down for each race!” says Brouqueyre with a smile. These trips between Normandy and Béarn didn’ t prevent this king of Pau from winning twelve times at Pont-Long!
The Need to Adapt To remain attractive, meetings must adapt to the evolution of racing and economic pressures.“ Owners think less about pleasure and more about income,” notes Fouin. In Cagnes, boxes remain free if trainers house at least two runners.“ Studio and two-room flats cost between € 145 and € 188 a week. For the region, that’ s nothing!” says Roucayrol. In Pau, boxes cost € 160 excluding VAT for the duration of the meeting but become free if the horse housed has run at least once, without earning € 7,000. Everything is done to encourage entries, and both Pau and Cagnes take great care to protect their meetings and promote their racecourses, loved like a football or rugby club.“ Only mutual help and collaboration between teams— permanent or hired in reinforcement— make such an organisation possible. It is our ability to remain agile that will allow us to overcome the industry’ s current difficulties,” concludes Brouqueyre. Dynamism against gloom, which makes Pau one of the most popular racecourses in France. Admission is free, and the Grand Prix and Grand Cross
each attract over ten thousand spectators. In Cagnes too— the last racecourse in the south of France to offer jump racing— everyone works hard. Efforts are made to make the courses safer.“ We have just moved the bull-finch, which is no longer on the turn but positioned as the last obstacle in the back straight. We hope that this big jump will help slow down and rebalance the horses before the bend,” explains Thomas Roucayrol. His team handles twenty-four race meetings in January across all three disciplines! A technical and organisational feat. So when a champion emerges, people in the south see it as a reward. One thinks, in particular, of Lazzat, who won his first three races at Cagnes during the winter of 2024 before winning his first Group 1, the Arc Prix Maurice de Gheest, the following August at Deauville. Trained by Jérôme Reynier and carrying the colours of Nurlan Bizakov until last May, he has become Europe’ s best sprinter, winning the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes at Ascot last summer. The Cagnes-sur-Mer meeting could not dream of a better ambassador!
ENGLISH INSPIRATION
Why meetings in Pau and Cagnes? Because both Béarn’ s capital and the Côte d’ Azur once had the favour of the British, who would spend their winters there to enjoy the mild climate. They brought with them their love of racing, but also of golf( Pau’ s golf course, founded in 1856, is the oldest in continental Europe). In 1842, Scottish doctor Alexander Taylor published a book praising the therapeutic virtues of Pau’ s water and climate for treating lung ailments. The book boosted the influx of Anglo-Saxon visitors. It was also in 1842 that the Pont-Long racecourse opened. The first Grand Prix de Pau was run in 1879, and the first Grand Cross in 1924. World War I marked the end of the English presence in Béarn. A similar story unfolded in Cagnes-sur-Mer: British visitors created a racing club in Nice as early as 1851 and immediately organised a first meeting in a field. The Nice racecourse was inaugurated in 1869, Cannes in 1920. Both organised winter meetings that followed one another in the calendar. World War II destroyed both tracks, and the decision was made to replace them with a new racecourse— Cagnes-sur- Mer— opened in 1952. The first winter meeting there took place in 1956 – 1957.
TROTTERS’ HEARTS RACE IN WINTER
The Vincennes winter meeting began on 30 October and will only end on Sunday 28 February. Until then, two-horse lorries with sulkies strapped to the back will criss-cross the roads of France, all converging on Paris! And the Grosbois training centre— the operational base behind Vincennes— will buzz like a hive, as many trainers stable all or part of their yard there over the winter. Created in 1906 during a period when gallopers were absent— fibre-sand tracks had not yet appeared— the meeting be-
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