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ParisLongchamp Sunday preview: Graeme North tips for the Prix Ganay card

By Graeme North

Horse Racing

Sun April 27, 2025 · 8M ago

Our French expert takes a look at Sunday's ParisLongchamp card which features the Prix Ganay.

The first major race of the 2025 Flat racing season in France takes place this Sunday which is, of course, the Group 1 Prix Ganay (15.25) for older horses over an extended mile and a quarter, or 2100m to be exact.

The race might have a long history of famous winners but the last three or four renewals have been substandard and, in that respect, it will be slightly disappointing if either of the two horses who ran in it last season and didn’t even manage to make the first three, Horizon Dore and Al Riffa, were to prove good enough this time around.

One thing in Al Riffa’s favour this time around is that he has already had a run, unlike 2024, having finished third behind Shin Emperor in a Group 2 race at Saudi Arabia, but it might be that for all his modest showing in the Arc when the subject of a rather bizarre jockey booking, his ideal distance nowadays is a mile-and-a-half at which trip he won a German Group 1 last summer by five lengths.

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There are fewer straws at which to clutch with Horizon Dore. He’s not won since the 2023 Prix Dollar when he was on a roll and that was his fourth win in succession, finds this trip an absolute maximum and has two-and-a-half lengths to find on recent Prix d’Harcourt running with the likely favourite Map Of Stars who won that well-run race with plenty of authority.

With the front-running mare Higher Leaves declared and partnered again by Alexis Pouchin who rode her to both wins in France last season, there’s a fair chance this year’s Ganay race will be well run too, though given the task she faces – 15lb to find on Timeform ratings – it may be that her connections will opt to play a tactical hand instead.

The Harcourt was a big step forward in form terms from Map Of Stars and not the first time either for a French-trained horse finally encountering a strongly-run race for the first time but unsurprising too given he had a late introduction as a two-year-old and only managed three races last season after resuming his career in the summer.

Royal Rhyme isn’t quite up to this level - he was seventh in the Irish Champion, sixth in the Juddmonte International and fifth in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes when Horizon Dore was third - but the same can’t be said about the only other runner Sosie who is likely the biggest danger to Map of Stars.

He really came into his own in the second half of last season, winning the Grand Prix de Paris and the Prix Niel where he reversed French Derby form with Look De Vega and was even sent off favourite for the Arc only to finish fourth behind Bluestocking.

It looks significant he’s been kept in training at four, but this race looks a means to an end rather than the end itself and Map Of Stars might have too many guns on the day.

Warning over Aventure ahead of return

The best placed French three-year-old in the Arc last season, runner-up Aventure, makes her seasonal reappearance on the same card in the Group 3 Prix Allez France at 14.50.

Anyone who read my columns last year will know the esteem in which I held her, even advising backing her each-way at 33/1 for the Arc after her fourth place in the Prix de Diane, and she was arguably unlucky not to have won the big one with replacement rider Stephane Pasquier guilty in my eyes of allowing Rossa Ryan first run on Bluestocking.

On that form Aventure has 17lb in hand on Timeform ratings over Grand Stars, a listed winner at Saint-Cloud at the end of last year, and ought to win with something to spare but she does concede race fitness to all bar one of her opponents, nearly all of whom met three weeks ago in the listed Prix Zarkava won by Zuna.

She also came on a lot from her reappearance last season when she was second and is a much better filly at a mile-and-a-half than this slightly short-of-ten-furlong trip so I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to take a short price.

Seven go to post in the other Group 3, the Prix de Barbeville (13.33) over 3000m or 15 furlongs in old money, a race that pitches proven form at around the trip against potential for improvement at the distance from those trying it for the first time.

Strictly on staying form, Presage Nocturne who finished third two lengths behind Arc fifth Sevenna’s Knight in the Prix Gladiateur last September, is the one to beat and he showed he’s not an out-and-out plodder when winning a listed race over a mile-and-a-half on Deauville’s Polytrack surface at the end of 2024.

He ran well enough off a handicap mark of 109 on good to firm ground in Saudi Arabia in February and so much did he improve last season he might still have his best days ahead of him.

That sentiment probably applies even more so, however, to Candelari, who is having his first start on turf after three wins on the artificial surface at Chantilly, as well as Internaute. By Frankel out of Candara who is a half-sister to the dual Group 2 middle-distance winner Candarliya.

Candelari didn’t make his debut until December as a three-year-old in 2024 but he won each of his first two races by eight lengths and then took the scalp of the high-class stayer Double Major in a minor event last time despite that rival having the advantage of a four-length head start entering the straight in what had been a slowly-run affair.

He’s potentially very smart but it should be remembered he was receiving 10lb from Double Major, who has since gone on to finish second to Dubai Future in the Group 2 Dubai Gold Cup, and given his size it might be the Moyenne Piste (middle of the three round tracks) might not be the most suitable track.

Preference is for impeccably-bred Internaute. He was fifth to Sosie in the Grand Prix de Paris on his final start last season but looked a much improved performer on his first start since joining Christopher Head when beating the useful Rashford (Al Qareem third) eased down substantially in a Listed race at Saint-Cloud on his reappearance in March and, by Sea The Stars out of the Arc winner Solemia, promises to be well suited by this longer trip.

Murky picture after French trials

Field Of Gold might have emerged as the dominant 2000 Guineas contender at home among the colts but even after their trials the picture in France is not quite as clear cut.

Maranoa Charlie (also trained by Christoper Head) won the Prix Djebel on unusually fast spring ground at Deauville earlier this month, a win I covered in my last French review column two weeks ago, and while I credited that win with a performance rating of 112, pretty much the same level as he achieved in the Prix Thomas Bryon once the amount he was eased down that day is factored into the result, it wouldn’t be quite good enough to guarantee success in the Poule d’Essai de Poulains with 116 or 117 being more commonly the level required in the race these days.

That said, I suspect he’s still the leading home-trained candidate for the Guineas after the other major trial for the Poulains, the Group 3 Prix de Fontainebleau, went to Ridari who got the better of another promising type Sahlan by a nose with the form choice Misunderstood back in third.

RIDARI wins the G3 Prix de Fontainebleau

Equipped with a hood, as he had been when at Chantilly on his second start last November, Ridari took a while to settle in the early stages as Misunderstood set just an ordinary pace but once the race developed in earnest and he was produced from out of the pack with 400m to go he picked up smartly, particularly in the last 200m which the tracking data had him running 0.17 seconds faster than any of his rivals.

By Churchill out of Ridasiyna, a 122-rated mare who won the 2012 Prix de l’Opera in the mud by three-and-a-half lengths, one would expect Ridari to be a better fit for the French Derby and quite possibly he will be but he’s clearly not short of speed and at 112p currently sits on the same rating as the free-going Maranoa Charlie for whom 1600m will almost certainly be a limit.

Sahlan, a four-length winner at Deauville on his only previous start, looked to have the race in the bag for much of the straight and promises to improve further, while Misunderstood, who had finished one place ahead of Field Of Gold on soft ground in the Jean Luc Lagardere last autumn, looked to me to confirm pre-race suspicions that he is more of a ten-furlong type, done for a turn of speed early in the straight but keeping on strongly at the line.

Of the others, Lagardere sixth Heybetli ran the fastest section from 600m out to 200m out but had no more to give in the final section after making his run from last place; the favourite Darius Cen, who’d won the listed Prix Omnium at Saint-Cloud in March, the same race the last two winners of the Fontainebleau had also won, couldn’t cope with the much faster conditions and beat only two home.

Zarigana one to beat in French 1000

On the same card as the Fontainebleau, last year’s top French two-year-old filly Zarigana lined up in the Prix de la Grotte in preference to the Prix Imprudence at Deauville which had been run several days earlier and had gone to Better Together (109p).

Sent off odds on, it’s fair to say Zarigana wasn’t wildly impressive and perhaps didn’t pick up quite as her rider Mickael Barzalona perhaps expected given how easily she had travelled into contention, but the race was slowly run with the leader reaching the halfway point over three seconds slower than the Misunderstood had in the Fontainebleau and developed into something of a short straight burn-up with all seven of the runners flashing through the penultimate 200m faster than Ridari had done and six of the seven repeating that feat in the final 200m.

She’s still the one to beat in the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches, however, though, a race that is surely on the agenda too for third-placed Godspeed who ended up running two of the last three 200m sections faster than Zarigana and the other one only marginally slower.

The Prix Noailles, a trial for the Prix du Jockey-Club and won by Calandagan last year, was a messy affair with those that raced towards the inside getting in each other’s way for some of the straight whereas the winner Uther enjoyed a clear passage down the outside.

How much, if anything, that benefitted him is hard to tell seeing as he looked to be comfortably the best horse in the race in any case, producing a powerful run from the rear and hitting a top speed according to the tracking data that was over 2km per hour faster than any of his opponents and higher than even Ridari managed in the Fontainebleau.

He’d finished second behind one of the Noailles also-rans Aidan’s Phone in a listed race at Saint-Cloud in March when ridden up with the pace on very soft ground but he looks a good moving colt almost certainly better suited by the faster conditions he encountered at Longchamp and a return to the waiting tactics used on him when making a winning debut at Chantilly in November too.

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