Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe preview: Hukum, Westover and Ace Impact star in Longchamp showpiece

After months of blood, sweat and tears it all comes down to this; the first Sunday in October and a sun-baked Paris ready to welcome the world’s best middle-distance horses for what essentially boils down to a survival of the fittest at the end of a long campaign.

Make no mistake, simply getting to the start line for a race like the Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is a significant challenge in itself.

Sure, the list of 15 horses scheduled to go to post for this year's renewal remains an illustrious one – featuring no fewer than 11 individual Group 1 winners – but it’s very different to the one we might have predicted back in the spring when well-established older horses such as Adayar, Desert Crown, Hurricane Lane, Pyledriver and Vadeni were still on the scene.

Month by month the pool of would-be Arc contenders has shrunk due to injuries or loss of form until only a select few remained, while the fear of another mudbath at Longchamp – misplaced this year as it turns out – was so strong that the race wasn’t even considered for some star names, including Japanese ace Equinox and the dual Derby and Irish Champion Stakes winner, Auguste Rodin.

The world’s best racehorse with a Timeform rating of 134, Equinox would surely have been a red-hot favourite had he made the trip to Paris and the decision to stay at home is likely to mean that the long wait for a first Japanese-trained winner of the Arc goes on for at least one more year.

But what it also means is that we’ve got a fiercely competitive heat to look forward to on Sunday – generally 3/1 the field at the time of writing – with runners from five different countries going head-to-head for the total prize fund of €5 million and plenty else besides.

Because whilst Equinox might have the title of world champion already sewn up, the accolade of top dog in Europe is still very much up for grabs as we head into the autumn, a close-fought bout in which the result of the Arc could land a telling blow, putting an end to all the noise after months of anticipation.

Is the standard set by the pair who went 12 bruising rounds in the King George already good enough? Can the unbeaten Prix du Jockey Club winner take the step up to the heavyweight division in his stride? Or could the improving St Leger winner be the one to land another knockout punch?

Off the canvass and into the Arc cauldron

For Owen Burrows, blood, sweat and tears is a barely adequate description of what he’s been through with Hukum over the last couple of seasons.

It was June last year that Hukum announced his arrival at the top of the sport with an impressive success in the Coronation Cup – a first at Group 1 level for his trainer – but then no sooner a serious leg injury was discovered which threatened to bring his career to a premature end.

Most other horses would have quit on their stool there and then, but then Hukum is not just any other horse. The way he’s bounced back from that setback seemingly better than ever at the age of six is testament to his remarkable toughness, a quality he again showed in spades when last seen fighting off Westover to win a thrilling edition of the King George.

Burrows could be forgiven if he had a tear in his eye afterwards and perhaps the only thing that could surpass that moment would be if Hukum was to follow in the footsteps of his sire, Sea The Stars, the world's best racehorse in 2009, by winning Europe’s richest race.

It would certainly be a poignant victory for the Shadwell team, with the Arc being one of the few major prizes Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum failed to win in a career as an owner-breeder spanning more than 30 years before his death in March 2021.

And if Hukum was to defy his wide draw and 90 years of history on Sunday – no horse aged six or above has won the Arc since 1932 – then there’s a very real chance that Shadwell will have been responsible for Europe’s best racehorse two years in a row, with two full siblings, no less.

Westover invokes rematch clause

Hukum certainly belongs in that conversation as things stand, though he doesn’t have the same margin for error that Baaeed did when head and shoulders above everything else in 2022. After all, Hukum only has the head to spare over Westover on their Ascot form, the runner-up emerging from that scrap bloody nosed but with his reputation enhanced.

Westover certainly looks a better horse now than the one who finished sixth behind Alpinista in last year’s Arc. He’s added consistency to his record, too, yet to finish out of the first two in four starts at Group 1 level in 2023, with his other efforts including a runner-up finish behind Equinox in the Dubai Sheema Classic and a straightforward victory in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud.

His supporters can take encouragement from the exploits of Waldgeist, only third behind Enable in the 2019 King George before gaining his revenge on that rival at Longchamp. Waldgeist is also one of three horses in the last decade to have won the Arc having been beaten in the race the previous year, the others being the 2016 heroine Found and 2020 winner Sottsass.

And whereas the Shadwell silks have never before been carried to victory in the Arc, Westover will be sporting the Juddmonte colours synonymous with Khalid Abdullah, a six-time Arc winner, most notably with Enable in 2017 and 2018.

Abdullah died in January 2021 but, like Sheikh Hamdan, his legacy lives on through the many talented horses he produced in his life as an owner-breeder, headed by Westover’s sire, Frankel, arguably the greatest thoroughbred to have ever graced the turf.

Ace Impact a chip off the old block

Frankel is already an Arc-winning sire thanks to his best daughter, Alpinista, while his best son, Cracksman, was involved in a couple of the most notable 'what-might-have-been' moments in the Arc in the last decade, although neither of them made Graham Cunningham’s top five in the latest edition of the Sporting Life podcast.

With a Timeform rating of 136, Cracksman was the world’s best racehorse in both 2017 (when tied with Battaash) and 2018, but the travesty is that he never contested Europe’s premier middle-distance race, with his career-defining moments instead coming when he routed his Champion Stakes rivals by seven lengths as a three-year-old and by six lengths the following year.

It made no odds to John Gosden and Frankie Dettori, who still teamed up to win the Arc in both years with Enable, but the casual punter couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if the pair had ever met. The figures suggest Cracksman would have been a worthy opponent for even a peak-form Enable (rated 134 plus 3lb sex allowance) in 2017, never mind the one who scraped home from Sea of Class 12 months later.

Cracksman's own stallion career is still in its infancy but, like Frankel did with him, he's produced a three-year-old colt potentially out of the top drawer in his very first crop, namely the Prix du Jockey Club winner Ace Impact, who will be trying to take his career record to 6-0 when he comes up against older rivals for the first time on Sunday.

The Arc is likely to require a career-best performance from Ace Impact if he's going to topple two heavyweights of the division in Hukum and Westover, but he's done everything asked of him so far, winning his first four races by way of devastating knockout before returning from 10 weeks off with a calculated points victory in the Prix Guillaume d'Ornano when last seen in August.

That outing is likely to have put Ace Impact spot on for his biggest test at Longchamp and he's certainly got the right man in his corner in the shape of veteran trainer Jean-Claude Rouget, who won his first Arc with Sottsass in 2020 and also saddled Vadeni to fill the runner-up spot 12 months ago.

It remains the case that no horse has won the Arc on their first run over a mile and a half since Saumarez in 1990, but Vadeni's huge run in defeat last year will give Ace Impact's supporters cause for optimism given that he had a very similar profile having also won the Prix du Jockey Club earlier in the campaign.

More to come from Continuous or a step too far?

If trends followers are giving Ace Impact the hard eye, then heavens know what they're doing to poor Continuous as he tries to become the first St Leger winner in history to add the Arc to their tally in the same year. It's also been pointed out that Aidan O'Brien has run 30 three-year-olds in the Arc over the years and only one of them – High Chaparral (third in 2002) – even finished placed.

Undeterred, Continuous' connections paid €120,000 to add him to the field on Wednesday and he'll be the sole runner from Ballydoyle in this year's Arc having proved himself a very smart and progressive colt in the last six weeks with a pair of dominant victories, first in the Great Voltigeur Stakes and then on Town Moor.

Whether he possesses the class and speed required to win an Arc is a different question altogether, but don't be surprised if this strong stayer is still working away behind his jab when others have cried enough on Sunday.

The other supplementary entry on Wednesday was Deutsches Derby winner Fantastic Moon, who booked his place in the line-up when taking another step forward to win the Prix Niel, turning over odds-on favourite Feed The Flame in what is traditionally one of the key trials for the Arc.

Fantastic Moon has certainly earned his right to be there on Sunday, though he's far from guaranteed to uphold the form with the Grand Prix de Paris winner who chased him home in their prep.

If styles make fights, then a well-run Arc is likely to suit Feed The Flame much better than what developed into a rather muddling affair when he was left with too much to do in a modestly-run Niel.

Stoute, Japan and Dettori the potential stories

If you're more of a lover a fighter, then there are several stories bubbling beneath the surface with the potential to warm your heart on Sunday, the sort of occasion we enjoyed 12 months ago when Alpinista sluiced through the mud to provide veteran trainer Sir Mark Prescott with a popular success.

Sir Michael Stoute, another sainted member of the Newmarket training ranks, could certainly do with something to put a smile on his face as a disappointing season nears its end, one which has yielded only 26 winners in Britain and the realisation that Desert Crown might never get the opportunity to fulfil his potential after his career-threatening injury on the gallops.

Last year's Champion Stakes winner Bay Bridge is still knocking around, though, and the way he won the September Stakes last time suggests he remains as good as ever, with the added bonus that he’s now proven his effectiveness over a mile and a half.

Only time will tell whether Bay Bridge has what it takes to deliver Stoute a second Arc success on Sunday, but you can be sure that there wouldn’t be a more popular winner among the travelling British contingent if the outpouring of emotion for the trainer after Desert Crown won last year’s Derby is anything to go by.

Stoute’s first Arc win probably wasn’t quite so well received in Japan as his Workforce denied Nakayama Festa by a head in 2010, the closest a horse from the Far East has ever come to making the breakthrough at Longchamp.

Despite several other near-misses over the years, the Japanese enthusiasm for the race remains undimmed and they’re back for more on Sunday with the mare Through Seven Seas, who was beaten just a neck behind a certain Equinox when last seen filling the runner-up spot in the Takarazuka Kinen.

Admittedly, it would be dangerous to take a literal reading of that form, but what is clear is that Through Seven Seas is peaking at just the right time as she tries to finally provide Japan with a first Arc success after more than 50 years of trying.

And then there's Dettori, the most successful jockey in the history of the Arc with six wins.

Considering everything that has to go right just to get to the start line at Longchamp, it's remarkable to think that Dettori has sat out only two editions of the Arc since picking up his first mount in the race in 1988. A broken ankle caused him to miss the winning mount on Treve in 2013, while he was all set to partner Love in 2021 before a setback ruled her out of the race at the eleventh hour.

This year 20/1 outsider Free Wind has the distinction of becoming Dettori's 34th and final ride in the Arc before the Italian heads into retirement at the end of the year, waving goodbye to nearly four decades of blood, sweat and tears.

It's on special days like this that Dettori will be reminded what it was all for; the first Sunday in October and the promise of a thrilling battle where only the fittest will survive.

More Arc de Triomphe content

• Horse-by-horse guide to the field
• Our experts give their Arc tips
• Statistics and trends guide
• Urban Sea's Longchamp legacy
• Arc weekend: Undercard wonders
• Meet the market leader Ace Impact
• How does Continuous measure up?
• Profile of Japanese contender Through Seven Seas
• Arc de Triomphe preview Podcast
• Ben Linfoot's 30 greatest Arcs

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