John Ingles looks at the belated opening up of the Arc to geldings, something Timeform had been advocating for years.
Forty years ago this year, a rule change came into effect which, on paper at least, was a significant one for many of Europe’s most important races. The European Pattern Committee lifted the ban on geldings taking part in all Group 1 races open to four-year-olds and up at the discretion of the authorities in the five countries belonging to the Pattern.
The colts’ classics would therefore remain untouched, but other major races were opened up, among them no fewer than ten Group 1 races in Britain, including the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the Gold Cup, the Eclipse and the Champion Stakes.
‘Hats off to the Jockey Club!’ said Timeform in response to a change of policy by British racing’s then authority which was hardly known for moving with the times.
‘However,’ Timeform continued in Teleprompter’s essay in Racehorses of 1985 – and this is why the italics in the opening paragraph are important - ‘before the toppers are raised too high on account of this change of heart by the authorities it is necessary to put matters in perspective. The decision, arrived at by the European Pattern Committee, is a compromise, and is not mandatory. There is no guarantee that the authorities in Germany and Italy in particular – no German pattern race was open to geldings in 1985 – will follow the British lead and change their policies, and the French have already announced that geldings will remain ineligible for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.’
Unlike their British counterparts, as far as the French were concerned, the Arc (along with the Prix Jacques le Marois) was untouchable and it has remained so until now despite Timeform continually banging the drum for Europe’s richest race to be opened to all-comers, whether they have the chance to perpetuate the breed or not.
With no progress in this matter by the time top-class French gelding Cirrus des Aigles appeared on the scene 25 years after most of Europe’s other Group 1 contests had begun to open to geldings, his essay in Racehorses of 2014 opened with the following paragraph:
‘Although precise information differs, the tree-dwelling three-toed sloth (found in South America and the size of a small dog) is generally regarded as being the world’s slowest mammal, its average speed around one sixth of a mile an hour. Racing could nominate its own contender: the collective membership of the European Pattern Committee moving imperceptibly towards removing the nonsensical ban on geldings in some of Europe’s Group 1 races.’
But even sloths get where they need to go eventually, and now it seems that the way is clear for geldings to contest the 2027 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. ‘The best races need the best horses – irrespective of whether they are geldings – in order to maximise competition and provide the best entertainment’ continued the essay on Cirrus des Aigles. ‘The idea that geldings should be excluded from the top races because those races exist for the purpose of selecting the best colts for breeding belongs to a bygone era.’
Geldings have faced no such prejudice in other parts of the world, including North America, Australia and in Hong Kong where they account for virtually the whole thoroughbred population in a jurisdiction that doesn’t have its own breeding industry.
While the Arc has been won by some very successful future stallions, such as Montjeu and Sea The Stars, the latter responsible for last year’s winner Daryz, both had already booked their place at stud as classic winners and defeat at Longchamp to any gelding in the field that might have been in the field would not have changed that. Others successful in the Arc, such as Rail Link, Workforce and Golden Horn, have ended up as jumps stallions, which presumably wasn’t quite the stud career that those who wanted to keep geldings out of the race had in mind for its winners.
Another factor that makes a nonsense of the notion that the Arc needs to be preserved as a stallion-making race, particularly in recent years, is the success of fillies and mares. They have now won ten of the last 18 renewals and that hasn’t prevented the likes of Camelot and New Bay, both beaten in Arcs won by fillies, making a success of their stallion careers.
In any case, just because geldings can now run in the Arc doesn’t mean they will, still less that one of their number will actually win the race. There’s no reason to expect the floodgates to open. That didn’t happen in 1986 when some of Britain’s best races were opened up. There were no geldings in either the King George or Champion Stakes that year, and just the one in the Gold Cup where Bourbon Boy finished eighth.
It was a different story in the Eclipse won by Dancing Brave, however. Two of the geldings that took part were the 500/1 pacemakers Come On The Blues and Grand Harbour, but the other two, Teleprompter who was third and Bedtime who was sixth, were serious performers. By then, both had covered themselves in glory in major overseas races where geldings weren’t shunned; Teleprompter (with a Timeform rating of 130 at his best) had won the previous season’s Arlington Million, while Bedtime (125) had been runner-up in the Japan Cup two years earlier.
But although geldings have been eligible for the Eclipse for forty years now, no gelding has yet won the race. It wasn’t long before a gelding won the Gold Cup, though. Having twice tried to take a bite out of an opponent or an opponent’s jockey, the moody Arcadian Heights was a prime candidate for a gelding operation, and his win in 1994 came at the expense of another gelding, Vintage Crop, in a field where five of the nine runners were geldings. ‘Where would the Gold Cup be if geldings were still excluded?’ asked Timeform in Arcadian Heights’ essay.
It took longer for geldings to make their mark in Britain’s major all-aged middle-distance races. Cirrus des Aigles broke new ground for geldings in the 2011 Champion Stakes, while the King George wasn’t won by a gelding until 2024 when Goliath was successful, quickly followed by stablemate Calandagan a year later. Hardly surprising, then, that their trainer Francis-Henri Graffard called the opening of the Arc to geldings ‘a logical decision.’
What the rule changes in Britain from forty years ago and the decision regarding the Arc both show is that rather than racing’s bureaucracy and committees, sometimes it’s the performances of the horses themselves – more precisely geldings in this case – that can be the real catalyst for change.
Britain’s all-aged Group 1 races might still be gelding-free zones if it wasn’t for the exploits of Bedtime and Teleprompter in the 1980s, and the same is surely true for the Arc had Goliath and Calandagan not excelled at Ascot and elsewhere in recent years.
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