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Enjoying that Warm feeling
The Galileo filly Warm Heart wins two Group 1s in a fortnight, writes Jocelyn de Moubray
WARM HEART WAS not the biggest of the eight fillies who lined up for the 1m4f Group 1 Prix Vermeille at Longchamp, nor probably the bestlooking either, but there is no doubt she is the best of the group at this distance.
The three-year-old daughter of Galileo gave her trainer Aidan O’Brien his 3999th career winner and first in this championship event, a race he which his top fillies Snowfall and Magic Wand have previously finished second.
The Andre Fabré-trained Pensee Du Jour, now running in the Wertheimer colours as she was part of the group of mares and racing stock purchased from Diane Wildenstein’s Ballymore Thoroughbred Racing in August, set a moderate pace and tried to quicken into a decisive lead off the home bend.
It was a tactic which never looked like being successful as a succession of challengers lined up to take her on in the final sprint.
Warm Heart was one of the first to be hard ridden but, like many of her father’s progeny, she proved to be the most willing and determined and, having got to the lead, she held the late challenge of the four-year-old Gleneagles filly Melo Melo to win by a neck.
She ran the final two furlongs 13 per cent faster than her race average.
It was a slightly disappointing race renewal as Blue Rose Cen, Above The Curve and Pensee Du Jour all ran well below their best and finished together in fifth, sixth and seventh. However, there is no doubting Warm Heart’s class and toughness and she was winning her second-hard fought Group 1 in only just over two weeks having won the Yorkshire Oaks only 17 days beforehand.
Warm Heart is the fifth by Galileo that her dam Sea Siren has produced – the sixth is the winning two-year-old Bremen – and Warm Heart is by far the best of her foals to date.
Sea Siren won three Group 1s in Australia as a four-year-old over 6f and 7f and a Listed race in Ireland over 6f. Warm Heart is very likely to win again at this level before becoming yet another top class Galileo filly to join Coolmore’s broodmare band.
THE PRIX NIEL (G2) was a more confusing race and proved once again, after a similar demonstration in the National Stakes at The Curragh on the same day, that it is worse to have a pacemaker with no plan than it is to have a falsely run race.
The race also proved that Liberty Racing’s Fantastic Moon is one of the top three-year-olds in Europe, and that this year’s Deutsches Derby is shaping up to have been one of the best in recent years and close to the level of 2020 when In Swoop beat Torquator Tasso with horses such as Kaspar and Grocer Jack further behind.
Jean Louis Bouchard’s Feed The Flame, the impressive winner of the Grand Prix de Paris (G1) in July, was sent off a short-priced favourite for the Niel and his connections ran the useful King Of Records as a pacemaker.
King Of Records went off in front but for the first part of the race he set only a slow pace, followed closely by Fantastic Moon and Rene Piechulek, while Soumillon anchored Feed The Flame at the rear of the field some 8l off the lead but more importantly 5l behind the Deutsches Derby winner.
As the field raced down the hill towards the straight jockey Simon Planque on the leader seemed to realise he hadn’t gone fast enough. He accelerated into a clear lead, but unfortunately for Feed The Flame, the rest of the field ignored King Of Records and let him race into the straight with a 4l lead.
Fantastic Moon, who had travelled comfortably in the perfect place from the beginning had no trouble quickening past and into a winning lead.
Feed The Flame and the third-placed Bravais ran the final 400m faster than the winner, but they never had any chance of catching him and Fantastic Moon held on for a comfortable two and a half length victory.
Fantastic Moon has an almost perfect record of five wins and two places from seven career starts. He won Germany’s top race as a two-year-old, and this year’s Derby and now the Niel; his only two defeats have come on soft ground on his home track in Munich.
While some top horses apparently don’t like flying to race meetings it seems that Fantastic Moon relishes long distance box travel.
Owned by Lars Baumgarten’s Liberty Racing [as featured in our July-August issue], Fantastic Moon is trained by Sarah Steinberg. She has only 27 horses in her Munich-based stable, but has trained two Group 1 winners: Mendocino successful in 2022 and now Fantastic Moon adding to her cv.
Her latest top level winner, a son of Sea The Moon, was bred by Philip von Stauffenberg and sold as a yearling for €49,000.
Stauffenberg purchased Fantastic Moon’s third dam Fraulein Tobin in 1996. She is a daughter of Fruhlingstag, who finished second in the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches (G1) and produced Running Stag, a top horse on Turf and Dirt for Epsom trainer Philip Mitchell.
Since then the family has produced some useful winners and high-priced yearlings, but Fantastic Moon is much the best in recent generations.
He is the second foal of his dam, the Jukebox Jury mare Frangipani. She only ran twice as a two-year-old winning on her debut and then finishing down the field in the Winterkonigin.
Frangipani has Fang Mich, an unraced two-year-old Starspangledbanner filly, and a yearling filly by Masar.
Fantastic Moon is a well-balanced athletic son of Sea The Moon and is a most attractive racing and stallion prospect.
Feed The Flame is a son of Kingman and out of the Montjeu mare Knyazhna. When he finally fills out his frame he will also be an impressive individual, and there will be another day for him.
The final major winner on the Arc trials day at Longchamp was Al Shaqab’s Lope De Vega filly Place Du Carrousel, who had too much speed for fellow Group 1 winners Iresine and Sammarco. She held on for a narrow, if decisive, win by a neck and a half length in the Group 2 Prix Foy.
The Fabré-trained filly won the Prix de l’Opera (G1) on heavy ground last year and is likely to take her chance in the Arc this year.
Place Du Carrousel is out of the Groupplaced Duke Of Marmalade mare Traffic Jam, and this is a cross which has also produced Antonia De Vega and the high-class Germantrained filly Quantanamera.
Fantastic Moon was originally due to run a week earlier in the Group 1 Grosser Preis von Baden and was withdrawn on the morning of the race when his connections decided the ground was too loose.
This left a field of six headed by the 2021 Deutsches Derby winner Sisfahan, this year’s runner-up Mr Hollywood and the Yann Barberot-trained Zagrey, a son of Zarak who had finished not far behind some of the best horses in the world, including Equinox, Westover and Nations Pride, in Dubai.
Mr Hollywood set a very slow early pace and the race developed into a sprint, which may have suited the French-trained Zagrey except that for most of the straight he and jockey Christophe Soumillon were trapped behind Mr Hollywood and Straight with nowhere to go.
Inside the final furlong Mr Hollywood just hung away from the rail giving Soumillon the gap he need and Zagrey quickened through to snatch victory by a half-length with Straight coming from last place to take third only another half-length behind. The final time of 1m39.77 was the slowest Grosser Preis this century, but despite the false nature of the race Zagrey and Mr Hollywood proved they are both genuine Group 1 horses.
Mr Hollywood was bred by Gestüt Ammerland and is one of only five three-yearolds from the first crop of Iquitos, a Group 1-winning son of Adlerflug.
One of the others, the filly Drawn To Dream, has been Group placed, and Iquitos has since moved the Gestüt Gradiz and will surely cover more mares in the future.
The Lope De Vega three making their mark on the European juvenile scene
EUROPEAN TWO-YEAR-OLD RACING doesn’t really get going until the end of August, but amongst the French-trained juveniles to have impressed at this early stage are three by Lope De Vega.
Philippe Allaire’s Beauvatier completed a fourtimer with another impressive win in a Group 3 at Longchamp at the beginning of September.
The Yann Barberot-trained colt defeated Ramantuelle in May and since then has shown great acceleration to defeat high-class fields at both Deauville and Longchamp.
He is the current leader among French-trained colts, but another contender is the Niarchos family’s Supercooled. Trained by Fabré he came from last place to defeat some experienced horses at Saint-Cloud on his debut in September.
The China Horse Club’s Lope De Vega filly Rose Bloom won one of the valuable Arqana sale graduate races run at Deauville in August and the Nicolas Clement-trained filly confirmed her class by making all to win a conditions race at Chantilly at the beginning of September.
All three are likely to be tried at a higher level in the future.
The same comment applies to Peter Bradley’s Metropolitan, a Mario Barrati-trained Zarak colt who made a winning debut at Deauville and followed this up by beating another Deauville debutant winner, the Aga Khan’s Siyouni colt Elbaz, in a conditions race in Chantilly.
The Group 3 Prix de Chenes lost some of its interest when Edouard de Rothschild’s Alcantor, a son of New Bay who had beaten the useful Ten Horns at Deauville, was withdrawn due to the unseasonal and exceptional prevailing heat.
In his absence the finish was contested by the Wootton Bassett colts Zabiari and Grey Man, who finished so close together there was an enquiry after the race.
The Aga Khan’s Zabiari was allowed to keep the race and both colts are likely to compete at a higher level before the end of the year.
The German two-year-old racing is even further behind timewise, but, for the time, being the best-looking winners are two Gestüt Karlshof homebreds.
The Havana Grey filly Three Havanas made a rare winning debut in one of the BBAG’s valuable 6f sales races at Baden-Baden easily beating some fillies who had shown some good form beforehand.
Her third dam is the Arc winner Three Troikas.
Maigret, a colt by Karlshof’s own stallion Counterattack, a son of Redoute’s Choice, had made an excellent debut at Hanover in August coming from behind in a slowly run race to defeat a previous winner and followed this up with an easy win in a Listed race in Dusseldorf in early September.
Counterattack was Group 1 placed in Australia over 6f and from his first three crop in Germany of around 25 foals a year he has already produced a some good class performers, including See Hector and See Paris.
