arc meeting
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CE IMPACT’s brilliant length and three-quarters victory in the Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (G1) was a new spectacle, or at least one we have not seen for years, and the Jean-Claude Rouget-trained son of Cracksman comes from a different type of racehorse to recent winners too. Ace Impact’s winning time of 2m25.52s was the fourth-fastest Arc of all time, nearly a furlong faster than Alpinista’s slog through the mud last year. It is also worth pointing out that the four
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fastest Arc winners – Danedream, Bago, Peintre Celebre and now Ace Impact – all won as three-year-olds, so perhaps there should be a different weight for age once the ground is very soft or heavy ? Serge Stempniak and the Cheboub family’s champion is the first unbeaten colt to win the Arc since Jean Luc Lagardère’s Sagamix won in 1998. He is the first three-year-old colt to win the race since Golden Horn in 2015 and the first Prix du Jockey-Club winner since Dalakhani in 2003 and, of course, the first since the Jockey-Club was changed to 2100
metres in 2005, even if Hurricane Run came very close to doing the double – he was beaten only a neck by Shamardal in the first shorter Jockey-Club and he won the Arc the same year. In that time the Jockey-Club itself has changed beyond recognition – Ace Impact’s winning time at Chantilly was six seconds, or some 30l, faster than that recorded by Shamardal and Hurricane Run on similarly good ground. Ace Impact, together with the third-placed Onesto, did (according to people such as Simon Rowlands of Attheraces who know
