French Racing / La Casaque Noire / 26 November 2007 / Leave a comment

More sprint races are needed across the Channel, says La Casaque Noire

The nominations for the recent Cartier Awards were quite an eye-opener from a French perspective - at least, they should have been.

For those not familiar with these awards, they are designed to recognise the best European horses of the year, in each age group, and over a range of distances.

We had more than our fair share of nominees, including the exceptional Manduro (who somehow was overlooked in favour of Dylan Thomas), Darjina (beaten by Peeping Fawn) and Natagora, who won the best juvenile filly.

In fact, we were represented in every category except best two-year-old colt and best sprinter. Regarding the best juvenile colt, it wasn't such a big deal, as the very promising Full Of Gold won his Group One (the Criterium de Saint-Cloud) too late to be considered.

But where were the sprinters? The best answer to this is "what sprinters?" A few years back we had the useful Whipper and Chineur did manage to win at Royal York. But since Anabaa, who carried all before him way back in 1996, we haven't really had a real top-notcher.
Indeed, close scrutiny of the Prix de l'Abbaye (the Championship sprint race) makes shocking reading for French afficiandos. The last French wins were by the American-bred Imperial Beauty in 2001 and by Anabaa's stablemate, Kistena in 1996. Before that we have to go back to Sigy in 1978. This year the best we could do was Tiza's fifth place (and he's South African bred anyway).

Seeing that breeding is more and more about speed these days, you'd think the French authorities might be worried about this and actually do something. Well, they did have a fiddle with the distances of the Classic trials a few years back - not to everyone's liking, I might add - but they totally missed their opportunity to do something for the sprinters.

The problem is that if you don't encourage sprinters, you're never going to have any fast, commercial stallions and you end up in a vicious cycle of mediocrity. This is exactly what's already happened here, with the stallions in France being the left-overs that nobody else wants. These tend to be the slower, staying-types, which is exactly why the French are succeeding in producing tough, durable jumpers.

For the first time this year the flagship Arqana yearling sale featured less than 50 per cent of horses bred from French stallions. This led to a hastily convened crisis meeting of the Syndicat des Eleveurs (thoroughbred breeders association) to discuss the problem and to try and find a solution.

Perhaps I can help? The reason seems pretty obvious to me. There are virtually no sprint races in the racing programme! In fact, there is just one sprint at Group level - the Abbaye itself. Add some sprints to the programme and like magic the sprinters will come. And in a few years the industry will be producing its own commercial speed stallions.

Tags: Cartier Awards, French Racing, Sprinters