It takes two to tango and what a dance it was in Paris on Sunday between the veteran, Cirrus De Aigles, and his more glamorous and youthful partner, Treve, in the Prix Ganay.
For about 600 metres of the Longchamp straight the two horses raced as one. Each furlong pole required a photo to split them but it was Cirrus Des Aigles that edged the photo that mattered.
Whether it has been Frankel and Farhh at Ascot, Gentildonna in Dubai, or Goldikova, and now Treve, at Longchamp, Cirrus Des Aigles has kept champions honest around the world for the past three years. Sunday was no different.
Rarely has there been a king or queen maker that has remained so obdurate in the face of better rivals for so long and, surely, at the ripe old age of eight he could one day threaten the record of Yavana’s Pace, who, at 10 in 2002, became the oldest horse to win a Group 1.
According to Timeform, the British ratings service, Cirrus Des Aigles’s victory was the best performance by an eight year old on the flat in recent times.
There was, therefore, a collective groan around the world uttered on social media when we were robbed of the opportunity to see another close embrace between Cirrus Des Aigles and his diminutive leading lady at Royal Ascot in June.
With Treve’s programme being what it is, the Ganay will be their only tango together.
Winning trainer Corine Barande-Barbe has stated that her globe-trotting flag-bearer will be aimed at the Coronation Cup at Epsom in June rather than two weeks later at the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, which is Treve’s next assignment.
Barande-Barbe may well be a hopeless romantic, but she has a sharp brain, and last week’s initial entry stage to Royal Ascot only highlights that she is right to duck the challenge in a bid to secure Cirrus Des Aigles his fifth Group 1 success.
Not only will a race-fit Treve be lying in wait, but the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes features, among its entry of 22, the Dubai World Cup night runners Ruler Of The World, Magician, Akeed Mofeed, The Fugue and Mukhadram.
Although Ruler Of The World and Magician are also entered in the Coronation Cup, the strength in depth to that race, which is to be run this year in honour of the ill-fated 2013 Dubai Sheema Classic winner St Nicholas Abbey, is simply not there.
Barande-Barbe clearly feels she has more chance of securing the lion’s share of the £360,000 (Dh2.2 million) purse at Epsom than the more sizeable £525,000 available at the Royal meeting, and therein lies the crux of the matter – Cirrus Des Aigles is a gelding and has to race for money, rather than possible breeding prestige.
Treve on the other hand has faced a setback, but nothing more. In receiving weight and a beating to the old warrior she ran the second best race of her short career.
To get into a street fight with the streetwise Cirrus Des Aigles on unsuitably soft ground on her first run of the season was a strong effort and one that can be built on.
Her Ganay performance revealed for the first time in her six-race career that she is willing to go toe-to-toe with the most gnarled opponent.
If her spirit has not been broken by the experience, when reruns of the 2014 Ganay are shown down the years it will be seen as a blip on what is likely to be a near-flawless record, rather than the start of a decline of a Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner.
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