Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe: Enable’s chance to write racing history
The Rugby World Cup is warming up nicely in Japan where England play Argentina on Saturday morning in what may be their first stiff test while the World Athletic Championships come to their climax in Doha. Nevertheless the big event of the weekend, one likely to end in tears, either of joy or sadness, will be over in a mere two-and-a-half minutes. This is of course the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, and joy will be unbounded if Enable can become the first horse to win the Arc three times. Several have won it twice, among them Tantieme (1950-1) the invincible Ribot (1955-6), Alleged (1977-8) and Treve (2013-4). Treve is the only double winner to have gone for a third victory and failed. So history may be made on Sunday.
Compared to the St Leger and the Derby, the Arc is a youngster. Where they date back to the eighteenth century, the Arc was first run in 1920; and, by what some of the more superstitious racegoers may see as a happy omen, the winner Comrade was trained at Clairhaven Stables, next to the Bury Road in Newmarket, which is just where Enable’s trainer John Gosden works his magic. Though the Arc is almost a hundred years old, we’ll have to wait a little longer for its hundredth running because, not entirely surprisingly, it was cancelled in 1939 and 1940, before surprisingly being revived in 1941, despite the German Occupation. It will be still longer before we have the hundredth running of the Arc at Longchamp because two of the wartime races were staged at Le Tremblay, and more recently two Arcs were run at Chantilly while Longchamp was being redeveloped. Indeed Enable’s 2017 victory was at Chantilly.
Great horses have star quality, but the best have short careers on the flat so that we rarely develop the affection for them that we may have for chasers and hurdlers. Some of the best retire to stud duties at the end of their three-year-old season, others race at four, but no longer. Enable is still racing aged five. For this we should all be grateful to her owner Khalid Abdullah and it’s also one reason why she is not only admired, but loved. We’ve had time to get to know her. The contrast with her jockey Frankie Dettori’s first Arc winner, Lammtarra, is marked. He ran only four times and won all four. Since three of his wins were the Derby, the King George and the Arc, he was clearly very good indeed, but compared, for instance, to Mill Reef, Alleged and Frankel who all stayed in training and raced as four-year-olds, he didn’t win hearts as well as races.
Enable’s record is remarkable. Since she lost her first three-year-old race, she has never been beaten. She has won the Cheshire Oaks, the Oaks at Epsom, the Irish Oaks, the King George twice, the Yorkshire Oaks twice, the Breeders Cup Turf in America, the Eclipse and, of course, the Arc twice. She has had easy victories and hard-fought ones, notably in last year’s Arc and this year’s King George. So she has courage as well as style, and this endears her to the public too. She knows she is a star as the best horses often do, and of course her partnership with Frankie Dettori is a star one – like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Together they have more than one way of winning, and in a race that is often as tactical as the Arc, this is important. She has a great temperament something not all fillies and mares are blessed with. Noel Murless, who trained one of my favourite fillies long ago, the grey Petite Étoile, said “she was a proper monkey at the best of times”. Enable is no monkey.
So can she win her third Arc? Of course she can. Will she? Who knows? So many things can go wrong in a race.
Looking over the list of the great winners of the Arc like Ribot and Sea Bird, Mill Reef, Dancing Brave and See the Stars, one finds oneself also remembering those that were expected to win but didn’t.
The greatest of these was surely Nijinsky, trained by Vincent O’Brien and ridden by Lester Piggott. He was the last horse to win the Triple Crown of the Two Thousand Guineas, Derby and St Leger, also picking up the King George at Ascot between Epsom and Doncaster.
A case of ringworm had interrupted his preparation for the St Leger and he had a hard race there. Nevertheless, he arrived at Longchamp as the champion and favourite. However, he was a nervous horse, inclined to sweat up in the paddock, and the paddock at Longchamp was very congested that day because President Pompidou and his entourage of ministers, courtiers, hangers-on and security men were there. Nijinsky became very fussed. Susan Piggott, Lester’s wife, remembered that “the world’s Press and TV were allowed into the paddock and they devoured Nijinsky. A Japanese TV man even put a microphone up the horse’s nose. It was a disgrace… It ruined the horse’s nerves and he was white with sweat by the time they reached the course.”
All the same he nearly won, but when he hit the front a hundred yards from the finish he began to drift left, and Sassafras, the French Derby winner, ridden by Yves Saint-Martin, caught him in the last astride and won by a head. He had had a long season and was done for. Apart from the rumpus in the Paddock, Lester thought the St Leger had taken too much out of him. He certainly wasn’t the only great horse to find that the Arc coming at the end of a long season was a race too far, but he was perhaps the greatest.
And so now, Enable. A third Arc would be a crowning achievement, triumph indeed and a record. It would also be the sixth Arc victory for Frankie Dettori, another record. My heart says “yes”. My head admits to doubts. Though I trust my heart is a better judge than my head.