6 minute read
Mr Consistency
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
CHANTILLY 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.
“I could no longer stay in Spain, however, I met my wife Patricia in Madrid and her father is Spanish.
“At home we have always spoken Spanish, I wouldn’t allow my children to speak French in the house when they were younger, and when I decide to retire from training we shall return home. Chantilly is the best place to train racehorses, but the only thing keeping me in France is the horses.”
Laffon-Parias is a young man compared with many of France’s other leading trainers, and if he speaks about retirement his career shows no signs at all of decline.
He has around 65 horses in his stable, down from the 120 or so he had in 2012 when he won the Arc with Solemia, but he continues to enjoy great success with Group 1 performers more or less every season.
At the time of writing Laffon-Parias has had had 22 wins in France this season, winning with 20 per cent of his runners and earning around €1.1 million in prize-money, which places him in seventh place in the trainers’ table with significantly fewer runners than the remainder of the top ten.
This year he has already had two Group 1 performers – the Wertheimer-owned three-year-old colt Shaman, second in the Poule d’Essai des Poulains, and the fouryear-old gelding Ziyad, who was beaten only a short neck in the final strides of the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud.
He has never been a small trainer – in his first year training in 1993 he was competing in Group races with Wessam Prince, a colt owned by Maktoum Al Maktoum. Just two years later in 1995 he won more than 30 races.
Since then he has trained a succession of top-class horses, including Solemia, Left Hand, Silasol, Keltos, Falco and Recoletos among many others.
He has trained for the same people for many years, and throughout his career he has trained mainly for people who breed their own horses.
At the beginning it was Maktoum Al Maktoum, and then the Wertheimer brothers, the Hinojosa family and the Marinopoulos family.
When owner Leonidas Marinopoulos decided to cut back the family’s racing operation Laffon-Parias lost 40 horses in six months. He seems happy with the reduced numbers, particularly as for him the biggest change he has experienced during his years
in Chantilly is difficulty in finding the right people to work in his stable.
“Working with horses is clearly a job which requires passion. Why else would anyone want to work the long hours, the weekends?” he queries. “My impression is that in France at least there are fewer and fewer people who share this passion for horses and racing. As a trainer my daily routine has changed little over the last 30 years, but it has become harder and harder to find the right people to work with me.”
For Laffon-Parias his passion for the sport was there early in his life and continues to shine today after 40 years living and working in the racing world.
“My grandmother used to take me racing to watch my grandfather ride,” he remembers. “I never considered becoming a professional, many of my family rode as amateurs, and being an amateur gave me the opportunity to travel and to meet racing people all over the world.”
Laffon-Parias won 150 races and rode alongside amateurs such as Marcus Armytage and Tim Thomson Jones. And the people he met included his wife Patricia, the daughter of the French trainer Criquette Head, and her first husband the Madrid lawyer, Jose Ramon Lomba Recarte.
When the racecourse in Madrid closed down Laffon-Parias moved to Chantilly to continue his career as an amateur jockey and to become assistant to his mother-in-law. He stayed for four years, widening further his circle of acquaintances, and in 1993 he started out as a trainer on his own in Chantilly.
Shaman at Longchamp
Two horses trained by Laffon-Parias are now standing at the Head family’s Haras du Quesnay – Attendu, a son of Acclamation and a multiple Group winner who has just completed his second season, and Recoletos, the winner of the Group 1 Prix du Moulin de Longchamp and the Group 1 Prix d’Ispahan and retired to stud duties this year.
“However, his owner Dario Hinojosa is a breeder more than an owner and dreams of making him into a top stallion.We bought some mares for Recoletos in December last year and he will have every chance.
“As we saw at Ascot this year Recoletos is not the only top horse his sire Whipper produced.
“Recoletos, though, has always been very like his maternal family. I trained his granddam Pharatta, a daughter of Fairy King who won the Prix de Sandringham and he is very like her physically.
“Recoletos was beaten only a short head and a length in the Prix du Jockey-Club by Brametot and Waldgeist, and he was drawn 12 of 12 and so with more luck he might even have won.
“When he went to Royal Ascot last year the authorities insisted he needed a vaccination. He hated injections and was so worked up he was not able to show his form at all. He was a very high-class horse from a mile to 1m2f.’
As Laffon-Parias explains, with the Jockey-Club run over 1m2f, anybody who has a high-class miler in France is tempted to try the race. This year Laffon-Parias and the Wertheimer brothers were able to resist the
temptation with Shaman after his second in the Poule d’Essai des Poulains; the owners had other horses for the race.
Instead, Shaman ran at Ascot finishing fifth over a mile in the St James’s Palace Stakes.
“He will run over further in future,” says Laffon-Parias. “I would rather he had been closer to the pace at Ascot as he has done before, and he had a moment of hesitation before running on again too late. Perhaps we should’ve gone to Chantilly after all!”
THE WERTHEIMER BROTHERS are the biggest supporters of the Laffon-Parias stable and they have 37 horses with him. They won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe together with Solemia, came within a short head of winning the Jockey-Club with Prospect Park, and he has looked after many top fillies for them from Goldamix to Impressionnante, the dam of Intello, Solemia, Silasol and Left Hand, the winner of the Prix Vermeille in 2016.
“I have to thank the Wertheimer brothers for their support,” he adds. “I work with them in complete confidence and there has never been a problem between us.
“We discuss all the plans together in detail, but they have never forced me to run in a race against my wishes. I have no say in which of their horses come into my stable, but I am very happy to have those I am allocated.”
Laffon-Parias has changed little over the last 30 years. He might be in his mid-50s, but he has the physique of the amateur jockey he once was.
He is always at the races when he has a runner, dressed in a close-fitting jacket and tie; he is almost alone amongst his fellow trainers in France in not changing the way he presents himself at the races.
He speaks about his horses with enthusiasm and attention, and his results continue to speak for themselves.
He does, however, frequently speak about retiring while showing no signs of actually doing so!
“Training horses is a passion but not an easy one, you work seven days a week for most of the year.
“I am lucky to have the wife I have but I missed out on some other parts of my life. I never went on holiday with my children when they were young.
“I chose to make my passion my life, but one day Patricia and I will return to Spain.”
