7 minute read
Racing Goals
Philippe Decouz is enjoying training for World Cup star French footballer Antoine Griezmann
A meeting last September set up through a mutual friend gave Philippe Decouz the opportunity all young trainers dream of.
For the first time he had been put in touch with a potential client who wanted to buy some horses and was prepared to invest some money looking for quality.
Decouz was in the middle of his sixth season training and was enjoying his best season to date. He ended 2017 with 19 wins, a total which he has gradually built up since starting off with eight winners in 2012.
At the end of 2011, Decouz started out as a trainer with two horses in his care at France Galop’s newly opened training centre at Chazey-sur-Ain, which is about 20 minutes drive from Lyon’s Saint Exupery airport and TGV station. He won stakes races and twice came close to winning a Group race.
In 2014, Imperiator was beaten two short heads when third behind Charm Spirit in the Group 3 Prix Djebel and the following year Do Re Mi Fa Sol finished third in the Group 2 Prix de Malleret, closing fast but still a short head and a head behind at the line.
Decouz had bought Imperiator as a yearling for €5,000 at the Arqana October Sale, nobody else wanted to take a risk on a colt with far from perfect conformation, but while his front legs are no doubt still the same today, he won his latest start at Sha Tin in June as a seven-year-old.
Do Re Mi Fa Sol, a filly from the first crop of Wootton Bassett, was not sold at Deauville’s October Sale and went into training with Decouz for her breeder Nicolas de Lageneste and Imperiator’s owner Arnaud de Seyssel.
Lyon is the second biggest urban
area in France and among the ten largest urban centres in Europe. It has two racecourses, a new All-Weather track and Lyon Parilly, which has one of the best Turf courses in the country outside Paris.
And yet in racing terms it is something of a backwater. The new training centre has round tracks, straight tracks, Turf and All-Weather tracks, everything a trainer could wish for, and yet since opening it has struggled to attract high-class horses.
Decouz is one of the few who went there with enthusiasm, the older Lyon trainers had been happy training on the racetrack, and he is now doing his best to put Lyon on the racing map.
The man Decouz met last September was Alain Griezmann, his son Antoine is one the stars of world football – he is a striker for Atletico Madrid and scored a penalty in France’s World Cup-winning final.
The footballer had decided he would like to have a racehorse and so his father came to met Decouz.
“The Griezmann family live at Macon about three-quarters of an hour’s drive from here,” reports Decouz.
“Alain, the father, has always liked racing and when his boys were young he used to take them to Cluny the local racecourse.
The best horse in Decouz’s stable then was Tornibush, a three-year-old who had won at Vichy during the summer and had gone on to be placed in two good races in Deauville and Saint-Cloud.
“He liked Antoine’s idea. Football at Griezmann’s level is a very stressful business and Alain believed that having a racehorse would help his
Tornibush was due to go the Arc de Triomphe Sale, but instead he stayed in the stable and has run four times since for a partnership between Griezmann and his previous owner de Seyssel, winning his last three starts in Griezmann’s colours at Marseilles, Lyon and Maisons-Laffitte.
Last year Decouz bought three yearlings on behalf of Griezmann: a Lope De Vega colt and fillies by Siyouni and Mastercraftsman for a total of €227,000.
Move forward eight months to June this year and remarkably two of three have already run and won – and both the Lope De Vega colt Hooking and the Siyouni filly Princesa look to be well above average.
By the end of June, Griezmann had run three horses seven times for five wins and a second place. It is perhaps what is called a “flying start”.
The two-year-olds broke their maiden in consecutive races at Lyon Parilly at an evening meeting on June 10.
“Antoine was already in Russia with the French team and his father had a previous football commitment too,” said Decouz. “However, Antoine wanted a member of his family to be there so he persuaded his brother Theo to come.
“Theo got stuck in traffic and so missed seeing Princesa win on her second start, but he was there in time to see Hooking’s winning debut and he was very excited. Theo compared the moment of Hooking’s win to watching his brother score two goals in the Europa Cup Final in Lyon a few weeks earlier!”
Having Antoine Griezmann as an owner is clearly an opportunity for Decouz and one which has already allowed him to keep Tornibush in the yard and select and develop two very promising well bred, two-year-olds.
It is also, of course, there is a responsibility, to his new client, while the nature of his new client brings a wider responsibility again.
There are very few footballers in the world with a higher profile than Griezmann and although football’s heroes have long been popular figures in the modern world they have an influence which is greater than ever.
Griezmann himself came to the races in Lyon to watch Princesa finish a promising third on her debut. He took some photos which he put on his Instagram account followed by 19.4 million people. The photos of
Princesa have been liked by a million people. Griezmann is also present on Twitter – just the 5.7 million followers – and Facebook, where he has 7.4 million followers. Whatever happens to Antoine Griezmann there are a lot of people watching.
Decouz decided early on in life that he wanted to be part of the racing world, but it took him some time to realise that he wanted to be a trainer.
He grew up in Paris and his family had no racing connection except that his grandfather lived near Aix les Bains, a spa town close to the Alps between Lyon and Chamonix, and one of his cousins was a steward at the racecourse which has several meetings during the summer months.
Decouz spent his summer holidays at Aix les Bains and remembers vividly the first time he went to the races aged ten.
“I was transfixed immediately,” he remembers. “The speed, the colours, the sounds, the whole atmosphere made a strong impression on me and from that day on I wanted my father to take me to the races.
“We used to go to Longchamp and Maisons-Laffitte and my heroes were Cash Asmussen and Dominique Boeuf. Later on my Lycee was close to Saint-Cloud and I used to spend my Wednesday on the racecourse rather than in class!”
His first direct involvement in racing came when working as an unpaid assistant to the stewards at Aix Les Bains.
“I thought that perhaps that was the best way into a world I didn’t really know,” he explains.
While studying law and economics in Alsace and Chambery he did some work experience with Richard Kent in England and at the Haras de Saint Voir and once his academic career was finished he spent a summer working at Arqana.
The next step was to send a year as an intern at the Haras de Maulepaire.
“I was the last one to be an intern there in the old fashioned way; my predecessors included Sir Henry Cecil, François Boutin, Alain de Royer Dupre and many others.
“I was fed and housed and every day I had lunch with the Comte and Comtesse Bertrand de Tarragon and whoever else had been invited. I was there for foaling and walking the yearlings and then in the afternoons I rode and helped with the breaking-in and pre-training, which also took place on the farm.”
His next step was to spend some time working for the trainer Dominique Sepulchre, who at the time had horses for the Wildenstein and Niarchos families.
“I wish I had spent more time there,” Decouz says. “Sepulchure is a very interesting man. He may have trained in an old fashioned way, but he was excellent at looking after his horses.
“There was no fat on his horses, only lean, but then I think our horses often end up reflecting our characters.
“I often tell my team that if you love what you are doing then the horses will enjoy it too. It was when I was there that I first started thinking about training.”
There was still a fair way to go before he was ready to make the jump. He spent some time working for what is now Markel Insurance in Normandy before moving on to France Galop where he spent six years working for François Boulard, who is in charge of the programme for racing in France.
“I loved my time at France Galop,” recalls Decouz. “I travelled a great deal, met trainers all over the country and the programme is at the centre of what we are doing.”
He decided then that he would set up as a trainer at Chazey-sur-Ain when the new training centre opened.
The final part of his long apprenticeship came working as an assistant to Stephane Wattel in Deauville for a year and a half before finding himself in charge of two horses at Chazey in November 2011.
In March the following year he won his first race at Saint Galmier with a horse who came with him from Wattel’s stable called Air De Danse, and then soon afterwards he won his first race at Aix Les Bains with Magic Roundabout, who won a claimer at 100-1. For the immediate future things are looking good for the Decouz stable. He has moved into one of the biggest barns on the site and there are now 40 horses and 20 two-year-olds in the stable.
While he is not getting carried away Decouz has high hopes for Griezmann’s three winners.
“Tornibush will get the chance to prove himself in stakes and Group races now,” he reasons, “and Princesa and Hooking are both horses I like very much. I have never worked them together and we are looking to buy a lead horse to ensure I won’t ever have to do so.”
Has everything gone too smoothly for his new and famous owner?
“Alain Griezmann knows that horses are difficult,” he replies to the obvious question in the circumstances. “Antoine likes to win, but at the same time he knows how to lose. He comes to the stable when he is staying with his father, on his own or with his wife or daughter, and I am sure he loves his horses. In any event he sees them very well.
“He is an observer and notices all sorts of small details. I think he sees races well too. This is why he is doing this.
“He invests his time because he enjoys it and because he wants to win and win good races.”
