Flying fillies

Fillies won all five Group 1 races at Deauville, observes Jocelyn de Moubray

Pretty Pollyanna

Deauville’s August race meeting is about the most international event in the European calendar with runners from two, three or more countries in more or less every Group and stakes race.

As is expected these days English trainers dominated the two-year-old Group and stakes races; Myriam Bollack Badel was the only French trainer to win a black-type race with a two-year-old.

More surprisingly nearly all of the equine stars of the month are female.

The fillies With You, Polydream, Alpha Centauri, Nonza and Pretty Pollyanna won all five of the Group 1 races. This was a far better year for France’s trainers than 2017 had been – between them they won three of the five Group 1 races and three of the four Group 2 races.

No French-trained three-year-old colt managed to win a Group race, but the threeyear-old fillies Castellar, Wind Chimes and Homerique all put up impressive winning performances.

France’s major trainers may be less interested in running their best two-year-olds in Deauville than was once the case, but there were impressive two-year-old winners for Le Havre, Lope De Vega, Frankel, Siyouni and Kingman who will be competing in Group races over the coming months.

Freddy Head has won a great many Group 1 races in Deauville and he has a particularly strong group of three-year-old fillies in his stable this year who were prepared for the meeting.

George Strawbridge’s With You dropped back in trip after two narrow defeats behind Laurens over 1m2f to win the Group 1 Prix Rothschild at the beginning of the month.

Only two weeks later the Dansili filly returned for the Prix Jacques Le Marois where she was again prominent and kept on for an honourable third place behind Alpha Centauri and Recoletos.

Alpha Centauri had already proved her superiority over her own generation and racing against older horses and colts made no difference at all.

The Niarchos family’s daughter of Mastercraftsman was unextended beating Recoletos comfortably while the pair drew away from their rivals.

Recoletos maintaining Laffon-Parias form

Recoletos has developed into a very high-class miler for his Spanish owner-breeders and together with his three-year-old half-sister Castellar, an easy winner of the Group 2 Prix de la Nonnette, continued their trainer Carlos Laffon-Parias’s outstanding season.

Towards the end of August, Laffon-Parias had won 34 races with 39 horses and 26 per cent of his runners had won.

Dario Hinojosa purchased Pharrata, the grand-dam of Recoletos and Castellar, in 1996. She was a tiny Fairy King filly out of a half-sister to Shahrastani.

She won the Prix de Sandringham for Laffon-Parias in his colours and, although she produced only one minor winner in Highphar, an unraced daughter by Highest Honor, she has now produced two top-class Group winners. Highphar has a two-yearold filly by Whipper, and so a full-sister to Recoletos, in training with Laffon-Parias and a filly foal by Adlerflug.

Polydream is probably the best of Head’s fillies and the daughter of Oasis Dream recorded her first Group 1 victory in the Prix Maurice de Gheest over six and a half furlongs.

This was an extraordinary performance as, logically, her jockey Maxime Guyon had decided to follow the favourite City Light without taking into account the trio of rivals, who were racing alone in the centre of the track.

Those following the race on the screens could tell at halfway that James Garfield, Efaadah and Wootton were clear of the remainder of the field grouped on the stands’ side of the course.

With two furlongs to run Guyon switched Polydream around City Light to make his run, but at this point James Garfield had left his companions behind and was some 3l clear of everybody.

The Wertheimer brothers’ filly showed a remarkable turn of foot to catch James Garfield and win by a half-length and the pair came away from a top-class field headed by the Group winners The Tin Man and Librisa Breeze, who finished from off the pace. The first two had very tough races, but are high-class sprinters.

James Garfield is a son of Exceed And Excel bred by Bill Gredley and trained by George Scott.

Two weeks later Gredley returned to Deauville to win the Group 1 Prix Morny with his home-bred Oasis Dream filly Pretty Pollyanna, trained by Michael Bell.

Both James Garfield and Pretty Pollyanna were offered for sale as yearlings, but were retained for £60,000 at Doncaster and 50,000gns at Tattersalls October Book 1 respectively.

James Garfield is by the fast Exceed And Excel out of a daughter of the Daylami mare Whazzat and is by far the best she has produced to date.

Pretty Pollyanna is the third foal of the unraced Shamardal mare Unex Mona Lisa and is also by far her best to date.

Unex Mona Lisa is a daughter of the unraced mare Friendlier, a half-sister to User Friendly who won the English, Irish and Yorkshire Oaks for Gredley in 1992 and came within a neck of beating Subotica to win the Arc de Triomphe.

Pretty Pollyanna was an impressive winner as she had to win the race twice. She cruised past the early leaders with a furlong and a half to run looking as if she was going to win with ease.

When Signora Caballo came with her run it was the Eclipse Thoroughbred-owned daughter of Camacho who looked to be going like a winner, and the pair drew away from their rivals together.

Pretty Pollyanna was back on top at the line to win by three-quarters of a length with the remainder 4l and more behind.

Mme Henri Devin’s Nonza was the surprise among the five Group 1-winning fillies in Deauville.

Trained by her son Henri-François, Nonza, a daughter of Zanzibari, a son of Smart Strike who stands at the family’s Haras du Mesnil, has won all four of her starts as a four-yearold. Her rating has gone from 92, when she won on the All-Weather at Chantilly in January, to 114 after she defeated Urban Fox when winning the Prix Jean Romanet in Deauville.

Nonza’s dam is a full-sister to Terre A Terre, who won the Group 1 Prix de l’Opera and the Dubai Duty Free for the Devin family and trainer Eric Libaud in 2001 and 2002.

Terre A Terre produced only one foal who also died prematurely, however her dam Toujours Juste had nine other daughters many of whom are still producing at the Devin family’s farm.

Nonza’s dam Terra Alta is by Kaldouneeves and was unplaced on her only two starts. Nonza is her second foal and she has a yearling filly and a foal by Doctor Dino, another one of the family’s stallions.

Knight To Behold may or may not go on to win Group 1 races, but the Harry Dunlop-trained son of Sea The Stars showed, as Eminent had done in the same race last year, that it is possible to beat some of the best French-trained horses by setting a fast even pace.

Knight To Behold completed the 1m2f of the Group 2 Prix Guillaume d’Ornano in 2m6.1s, nearly four seconds slower than Eminent’s time, but significantly faster than that recorded by the two previous winners of the race, Almanzor and New Bay.

Knight To Behold settled in front under Oisin Murphy and won unchallenged from Patascoy and Study Of Man, who had been first and second in the Prix du Jockey-Club.

In a Group 1 Patascoy would no doubt lay up much closer to the pace and next time no jockey is going to be happy to ignore Knight To Behold, but there is also more than a suspicion that this year’s European three-year-old colts are not a vintage group, and there is no real leader of the division in France.

Intellogent, Olmedo, Cascadian, Study Of Man and Patascoy have all disappointed since running well in Group 1 races and it would be no surprise if a lightly raced colt improved past them this autumn.

If British-trained horses dominated the Group and Listed races there were some good performances from French-trained juveniles during the meeting.

André Fabre had only two two-yearold winners, one in Deauville and one in Clairefontaine, but the Juddmonte-owned Frankel colt Delaware looked like a good prospect when winning on his second start in Deauville over 6f.

Delaware is out of an Oasis Dream half-sister to the Group 1 winners Proviso and Byword and he quickened past the early leader Jungle Speed to win by 2l.

Two Freddy Head-trained colts made good debuts with his wife’s Anodin colt Anodor beating a Fabre-trained Kingman colt Persian King in a slowly run race over seven and a half furlongs. George Strawbridge’s Lope

De Vega colt Lone Peak made a spectacular winning debut racing 7l clear over the same trip towards the end of the meeting.

Jean-Claude Rouget had two good-looking debutant winners, both daughters of Le Havre belonging to Gerard Augustin Normand.

Montviette won only narrowly over seven and a half furlongs, while Commes, a daughter of the Group winner Leaupartie, came from last place to beat her stable companion Olympe, one of the first runners in the colours of Haras Voltaire belonging to Thierry Gillier, the owner of the clothes brand Zadig and Voltaire.

Nobody can be surprised to see the Fabre, Head and Rouget stables producing highclass two-year-old prospects, however, they were joined by the young Deauville-based trainer Stephanie Nigge.

Nigge, who shares the licence with her father Markus, has 20 horses listed on the France Galop website, and they include two impressive juvenile winners.

Toijk, a Siyouni colt, came from behind to beat experienced horses from big stables over 7f, and Dezba, a Kingman filly, made a promising debut behind Montviette before breaking her maiden by 5l on her next start when dropping back to six and a half furlongs.

Siyouni had several other promising looking two-year-olds during the month, including the fillies Singing Tower and Siyoulater, who finished first and second in an unraced race over six and a half furlongs.

The winner is out of a Monsun mare and is trained by Nicolas Clement, while the second belongs to Peter Brandt’s White Birch Farm and is trained by Rouget and was bred by the Wildenstein family.

Meanwhile, in Germany Stall Ullmann’s Well Timed, a daughter of Holy Roman Emperor trained by Jean Pierre Carvalho, was a comfortable winner of the Preis der Diana (G1).

Despite the €500,000 in prize-money and the usual large crowd in attendance the race did not attract any foreign-trained runners and so it is hard to judge whether Well Timed will be up to competing on the international stage.

She was ridden close to the pace and never looked in any danger, winning by a length and three-quarters and two and a half lengths from Night Of England and Wonder Of Lips.

Well Timed has now won all four of her starts at three, and her grand-dam is a Sadler’s Wells half-sister to Hernando.

Jean-Claude Rouget