carlos laffon-parias Photography by Debbie Burt
Every season Chantilly-based trainer Carlos Laffon-Parias produces a Group-class horse – this year the Poulains runner-up Shaman is his headline act Jocelyn de Moubray chats with...
Mr Consistency
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HANTILLY HAS always attracted trainers and wanna-be trainers from all over the world The leading trainers based at France’s premier training centre have come from Britain and Ireland, from Argentina, Australia, Poland, Egypt or Spain. Some stayed, became French and even started dynasties of French horse people, others, however many years they had spent in France, held on to their nationality and, after making their mark in French racing, returned home. Carlos Laffon-Parias, a leading trainer in France for nearly 30 years and the first Spanish trainer to win the Przx de l’Arc de Triomphe, would not hesitate to place himself in the second category. “My family comes from Seville,” he says, “and I was brought up in Madrid. When the racecourse in Madrid closed down in 1988 I was an amateur jockey as my grandfather and many other members of my family had been before me. “I had started to ride regularly in the southwest of France and rode my first winner in Paris for Jonathan Pease at about this time.
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