Lazzat’s trainer Jerome Reynier is brimming with confidence as his star sprinter bids to bounce back to peak form in Saturday’s Betfair Sprint Cup Stakes.
It may be 17 years since the Haydock Park feature went the way of a French-trained horse, African Rose landing the prize for trainer Criquette Head-Maarek in the colours of Khalid Abdullah on that occasion, but Lazzat is a warm 2/1 favourite with the sponsors to claim his second big British prize of the year having won the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot.
Since starring in June, the four-year-old Lazzat has been beaten as odds-on favourite when only second to Sajir after racing keenly in the Prix Maurice de Gheest, a shock reverse for which Reynier partly blames himself.
Speaking on a press Zoom call organised The Jockey Club on Thursday afternoon, the trainer reflected on the Deauville defeat, saying: “He was racing after 50 days off and we brought him to Deauville five days prior to the race. We think he got a little bit of freshness between his travel and the race.
“Last year when we won the Maurice de Gheest he came the day before. So this time (at Haydock) he’s running after 27 days off and he will be travelling the day before. I think he’s had enough work to make sure he won’t be too fresh or too keen.
“He’s been staying in Deauville all month and we’re happy with him. He had his last piece of work on the racecourse last Saturday, that was very nice. He moved well and behaved well. He looks amazing, physically.”
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A son of Territories out of Australia mare Lastochka, Lazzat is bred to stay further and, having started his racing career over seven furlongs, made a couple of appearances - without success - over a mile at Sha Tin last December and at Saint-Cloud in the spring of this year.
However, the drop back to six and a half furlongs last summer sparked a huge improvement when claiming his first top-level success in the 2024 Maurice de Gheest, and the return to sprinting also worked a treat at Chantilly in May this time around.
“He doesn’t look like a pure sprinter physically. He looks like more of a miler, so that’s what we were thinking and it opens up more opportunities when you are able to stay a mile,” the trainer said regarding his experiments with distance.
“Obviously, the more he was running, the faster he gets. We started over 1500 metres, he won two Group races and then he won the Maurice de Gheest over six and a half furlongs. So we were aiming for the Golden Eagle in Australia (over seven and a half) and he only got beaten in the final stages of the race there.
“We tried twice over a mile after that but it’s probably too long for him. We went back over sprint distances and he won the Listed race at Chantilly, then he won in Ascot and that was the best prep for him to win this race.”
'We’ll see how good he is outside of Hong Kong'
On how good Lazzat could ultimately prove to be, Reynier concluded: “To be the fastest horse in the world, we would need to beat Ka Ying Rising from Hong Kong. That horse is going for the Everest (in Australia) and we will see how good he is outside of Hong Kong.
“With Lazzat, we could give him an international campaign as a five-year-old next year and start off in Dubai with the Al Quoz Sprint.
“Lazzat is happy to travel around the world so he’s very versatile and can adapt to any kind of conditions. He’s very easy to deal with and gets on very well with his regular rider.”
World-wide representation is something for which Lazzat’s owners Wathnan Racing are quickly becoming known and Reynier admits there is a certain amount of pressure that comes with preparing a highly-strung sprinter for a race like the Betfair Sprint Cup.
He said: “It’s a very different feeling when you bring a Group 1 horse as a favourite and everyone is waiting for you to fail. That’s a lot of pressure. But he could be the champion of the year and that’s very important for the team.
"Wathnan have been investing a lot and I’m hoping he can bring many more (top-level wins) for the team.
“He got beaten the other day so he needs to fire back and prove that he is the best.”
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