Mac Swiney
Hasn't won since the 2021 Irish 2000 Guineas and has matched his 120-rated performance there only once in eight subsequent attempts. That did come on the one genuine soft track he has seen since the Irish Guineas so autumn in Paris probably suits - but more than a dozen faster horses does not.
Mishriff
Had a brilliant 2021 – beating a top notch American on dirt a month before being a Grand Prix winner from Japan on turf. Some achievement. Every bit as good when second in the King George and even a bit better winning by a space at York but for all of that it often felt like he was seen in much the same way young rock fans would see U2 – happy to casually label them top class but no one is really listening, and the new stuff has dropped away.
Torquator Tasso
Shock winner of last year's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe but perhaps we should have seen it coming. The Germans have history in France. Across the last three years there have been 120 winners in France that had their last start in Germany, slightly outperforming chance. Torquator Tasso has slightly underperformed his chance in 2022, returning one win to a market that has expected around 1.5, but he does storm back into Paris off a Racing and Sports ratings array of 122-122-120 having run his Arc-winning 127 off a very similar 122-119-122 last year.
Mare Australis
Neither a mare nor from Australia. Quite a smart racehorse though and there is an Aussie connection. He beat Cups contender Gold Trip in the Prix Ganay last season and was about as good when winning the Grand Prix at Chantilly this campaign. Was well ridden but beat the useful Bubble Gift, Glycon and Grocer Jack fair and square – the last named has since turned out to be quite smart, 'improving' for having landed on British soil according to (misinformed) British handicappers.
Adayar
Adayar returns to Paris à la recherche du temps perdu - in search of lost time. The Derby and King George winner from 2021 could be ready to make up for a lost 2022 based on his low-key Doncaster return. Just three went to post but they were a useful three, and better than that in the case of Adayar who handled Masekela with a minimum of fuss. Now Masekela ain't no Arc horse, but he was a fit and in-form 111-rated one and Adayar swept him aside like an Arc horse could, should and would. Add to the pros column; his young trainer Charlie Appleby looks to have a clue and might just make it at the caper. He has a knack of achieving whatever he sets his mind to and that has been on full display for Australian punters who saw him dominate the spring between 2017 and 2019, ultimately winning the prize he wanted: "Internationally we have campaigned over here the last three years now and have been competitive but we have always learnt each trip what horse we felt was going to be needed on the big day." Ghaiyyath was down the track for Appleby in the 2019 Arc but he was back in 2021 with Hurricane Lane third and Adayar fourth – trending upwards and vowing to return 12 months on. His jockey William Buick is also trending upwards in the race, although that is something of a given when your first seven rides are beaten an accumulative 132 lengths. His stats elsewhere suggest that is a mere blip.
R&S Update: Charlie Appleby has stated a preference for Adayar to miss the Arc and head to the Champion Stakes. More here.
Deep Bond
Won the 2021 Foy on good ground before being beaten a furlong at $41 on heavy going in last year's Arc. Group winner at Hanshin this year, and game enough behind Titleholder in his last two, but he's slower than him and no more likely to cope if the ground goes souple.
Broome
Ryan Moore went full Ryan Moore to win Broome the Hardwicke at Royal Ascot and that brilliant ride is looking better by the day as Broome reverts to type. The potent record of the Irish Champion Stakes here looks far more dangerous in the hands of his stablemate Luxembourg for who he might be loosely tasked with setting the pace for.
Stay Foolish
Aptly named. Potential Melbourne Cup flyer who opted to fly to Paris and get thrashed instead.
Mostahdaf
In the last 10 years, horses coming off the September Stakes at Kempton into the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe have won more than five times their share and have beaten a great percentage of the field home at Longchamp than on the awful weather. This is largely down to Enable and that record is about to get worse.
Mendocino
Put up a career-best effort to win the Grosser Pries Von Baden last time, the very race that Torquator Tasso used as a springboard to Arc success 12 months ago. Had that one in second and the German Derby winner (who has run well again since) in third. Lone other go in Group One company had been his best effort at the time, a second to Alpinista in Munich last November, and perhaps he is one that can be set for and deliver on the big days. This is a much bigger day again though and $51 is probably the right price for anyone other than the trend followers, who are largely skint anyway, or those who like to tip one up that no one has heard of so folks know that they know who he is.
Titleholder 127
21.6 million people reportedly tuned in from Japan to watch the 2006 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Their 2005 Triple-Crown winner Deep Impact, who had broken the two-mile world record and followed up in the Takarazuka Kinen in 2006, went to Paris to more fanfare than surely any other before or after. Third, beaten officially at odds of 1-2 but with the PMU price crunched down even lower by patriotic punters in Paris. 22 shots at redemption since have returned a trio of seconds, one of them heartbreaking (especially for antepost shrewds but somewhat made up for by the funny YouTube video that followed). There have been eight editions since the most recent Japanese runner up, Orfevre's second, and Japan have featured in all bar one for no better than sixth place. The knocking on the door has become faint but Titleholder can claim to be one of the best shots from the Land Of The Rising Sun since the tapped Orfevre lit up Longchamp with his special brand of fast and flawed fun.
Like Deep Impact, Titleholder arrives having won the Leger, lost the Arima Kinen, and then won the Tenno Sho over two miles before dropping back and winning the Takarazuka Kinen. Racing and Sports ratings of 126-127 for those two wins stamp him as one of the best chances here and importantly one getting better having spent his three-year-old campaign in the shadow of Efforia.
Since Orfevre, 26 horses have run in France having run in Japan last time out. Five have won at nearly twice the rate of random chance and Titleholder looks a fine chance of adding to that positive record.
Bubble Gift
Niel winner last year that started $41 in the Arc and ran as well as he could in eighth. Has proven extremely reliable at that level, his last three runs all essentially matching that form, and it's not good enough here. Needs to spike to a level well clear of where he has been in the past and there isn't a great deal there to say that is about to happen. Strong bet to run eighth.
Grand Glory
Wonderful mare who deserves plaudits heaped upon her for a remarkably consistent run of ratings through 2021 and 2022. Dipped outside her 116-118 range in just one of ten ratings in that time and they were run across three countries - her effort to go to Tokyo and run her race to finish fifth in the Japan Cup a particularly admirable moment in a long line of them. She can probably be forgiven for dropping her bundle in the Vermeille which was run at a farcical tempo and she went there fresh and no doubt with an eye to this.
Thunder Kiss
This is optimistic. Voltaire would not approve.
Alpinista 124
Winner of her past seven, the last five of those at Group One level, and the best of those wins if British handicappers are to be believed came last time out (remarkably) improving sharply for a return to British soil. Her best effort for those studying and modelling results without Union Jack-coloured (coloured with a 'u') glasses was surely her demolition of last year's Arc winner Torquator Tasso in Berlin and she has been near enough that form in winning since to think that it is all still there for when it is required - which it surely will, and then some, on Sunday.
Long aimed at this by one of the great set-em-up-and-knock-em-down trainers of all time who has had great success with the family and connections. Sir Mark Prescott won the same three German Group Ones that he won with Alpinista back in 2004 with Albanova and had even greater success with her sister Alborada in 1998-99.
Alborada won four Group Ones including the Champion Stakes twice. She's been Prescott's best to date but that will no doubt change if Alpinista can land a sixth Group One in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. A cigar as big as a baguette no doubt at the ready should that occur.
Vadeni 125
Produced one of the spectacles of the season when routing the French Derby field and rated as highly as any recent winner of that race. That honour roll includes an Arc winner, Sottsass, alongside New Bay, Intello, St Mark's Basilica and Almanzor. The Derby in the same 10-year period has also produced an Arc winner, Golden Horn, but it's been a very shaky lot in the seven years since and so the Prix du Jockey Club, to the disgust of distance traditionalists and roast lamb-eating handicappers, must surely be considered Europe's premier Derby in that time. Such a performance was Vadeni's that I was left staggering around replaying it over in my head trying to comprehend how I could possibly get enough cash on him come Arc Day – common sense and the Kelly Criterion be damned.
Success, and a matching rating, followed in the Eclipse but he was lucky to beat another Jockey Club winner in Mishriff there and he was below that form in the Irish Champion last time. The Eclipse was run at a funky pace, and the run home at Leopardstown was a touch messy for Vadeni. Perhaps the performance that Vadeni's visceral Jockey Club display promised is lying latent ready to be realised on Arc Day. The man pulling the strings, Jean Claude Rouget, is the right man to reveal it. His 2020 winner Sottsass represents two of his nine Arc runners, all nine running to 110 or better judged on Racing and Sports Ratings and four of the nine have run beyond 120 on the day.
West Wind Blows
In my blackbook after running a fast time at Hamilton. I was not thinking Arc…
Al Hakeem
In Arabic, Al Hakeem means the one who is wise. It's a grand name, for a grand horse, and his performance in the French Derby was a grand one. He, along with Onesto, was a big closer from a hopeless position at Chantilly behind the breathtaking Vadeni – his stablemate. Strong late over a fast speed in a historically deep race. Something to make the ratings folk purr.
The SP profilers will find a tick here as well in the fact that Al Hakeem started 4/1 v Vadeni 7/1 and the form has worked out remarkably well. El Bodegon was second - which should come of interest to Australian viewers as he is on his way down under - and Modern Games third. Modern Games has since run second to Baaeed in a Sussex and beaten Group One winners in Canada by five, seven and nine lengths in a Woodbine Mile mauling. Al Hakeem was next in and has since won Deauville's valuable Prix Guillaume D'ornano, a race regularly on the radar for his stable with their top colts - Al Hakeem their fourth winner in a set that includes the world class Almanzor.
Fifth in the Jockey Club was Onesto. And Onesto is next.
Onesto
Left hopelessly placed in the Jockey Club but made many notebooks with his closing effort there. As was the case with Al Hakeem, Onesto was strong home over the top of a fast time backed up by significant formlines.
Unlike Al Hakeem, Onesto has done even more since. He turned the tables decisively on El Bodegon in the Grand Prix De Paris, sweeping through from last to run blistering late splits over the top of a very fast time that was in part the product of conditions but, viewed alongside Onesto's late speed had to be considered the work of a very smart horse.
That was confirmed in the Irish Champion, Onesto dropping back to ten furlongs and again producing high-class form to finish second on the same weekend that Simca Mille, runner up in the Grand Prix, won a truly run Prix Niel fairly and decisively and Eldar Eldarov, fourth in Paris, ran away with the St Leger at Doncaster.
Onesto has form to just about match any of the three-year-old challenge here and he has it more than once. There is meat on the bones of yet another fabulous Frankel.
True Testament
Andre Fabre is without doubt one of the greatest trainers to ever play The Great Game and he has won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe a record eight times. He went back-to-back with star three-year-old colts Hurricane Lane and Rail Link in 2005-6 and that fun fact has provided the backdrop to years of trendy picks from the tipsters who have struck out since. Fabre's lone Arc win post 2006 came from the 5yo Waldgeist and he has come up short with the gun colts Intello, New Bay and Lope De Vega – all who are much faster than True Testament on evidence to date.
Westover
Comes here representing the Derby form with Desert Crown on the sidelines. Guessing game as to whether he would have troubled the winner that day but he certainly would have run straight by the subsequently very expensive, and soon-to-be-Melbourne-Cup-also-ran, Hoo Ya Mal. Gained some compensation by winning the Irish version of the Derby, thrashing a ragtag lot that included the bits and pieces that Ballydoyle could still cobble together after an injury-ravaged Classic season, before getting hotter than Prince Andrew at a sweet sixteenth and failing to show up at all on the track in the King George.
Temperament might be a query then, after two months off and in front of a big crowd, but a vast number of them will be French, ensuring an art gallery atmosphere which may well suit. In the past 15 years eight horses have gone direct from the King George to the Arc with Workforce winning in 2008 and the group beating a greater percentage of the field home at Longchamp than they had done at Ascot.
Workforce was a Derby winner who had failed in the King George against the older horses in the same colours as Westover. Comparisons are inevitable. Perhaps the one that really matters is that Workforce had run much faster in his Derby.
Do Deuce
"Despite a disappointing result in the race it remains a great moment for me, and for as long as I am still riding I will carry on trying to win the Arc." Yutaka Take, Japan's greatest jockey, was aboard Deep Impact for his famous third in 2006 and that had come thirteen years after he came second aboard White Muzzle in 1993. We are closing in on the 30th year of Take's quest to win the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.
Take's latest attempt comes aboard Do Deuce, the horse that won him the Japanese Derby for the sixth time and, despite that, goes to the Arc as the Japanese second string. It is slightly strange to see a Japanese Derby winner cast in a supporting role but, at a glance, his chance at Longchamp does seem to hang almost exclusively on that one winning rating. Prior to the Tokyo Yushun, Do Deuce had shaped as though he could (even would) produce that sort of performance in the Satsuki Sho, so the Derby isn't entirely unsupported, and he did move into the Niel with some menace. Alas, that menace died out with a whimper but before a flimsy final furlong he had been clearly fastest from the 800m to the 400m in what was a strongly-run (very un-French behaviour) Arc trial. So perhaps it was a matter of fitness and a Parisian prep may prove all important. That Derby win compares well with Westover who has a similar profile and a shorter price.
Le Destrier
In 1813 the British were liberating large parts of Spain in the west and in the east the Russians were pressing into Germany where Napoleon was bunkered down with an exhausted army. Faced with a dire situation he wrote to his General, Jean Le Marois, "impossible n'est pas Français." Impossible is not French. But this is…
Luxembourg
If you type Luxembourg into Google you get seven suggested searches down before the horse is thrown up as an option but that may well change come Sunday. Not that the country doesn't look to have plenty to offer. Luxembourg, the country, has a fairytale charm, which the horse probably struggles to claim given he runs for the most powerful racing connections on earth.
Luxembourg spent last summer at the top of classic markets as the Ballydoyle boom horse. Beaten in the Guineas before injury and a scrappy return win had him briefly looking more Ol' Man River than St Nicholas Abbey but it was shades of the latter at Leopardstown - his Irish Champion Stakes win over Onesto and Vadeni slightly messy in behind, potentially a touch opportunistic, but ultimately strong. Strong enough to place him at the pointy end of the three-year-old ratings in Europe and at the top of Arc betting.
A bit like fellow members of the classic generation that line up here, Do Deuce and Westover, Luxembourg must lean right into one rating to support himself at the top of betting but at least it is a strong rating and one that many would have had him destined to achieve – or better – for some time.
Aidan O'Brien has a CV beyond any in the sports history and so for him (and him only...) two wins in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe feels a little light on. Both Dylan Thomas (in 2007) and Found (who led in a 1-2-3 for the yard in 2016) won the race having won the Irish Champion Stakes which has been the best pointer to the Arc in modern times – that pair among five winners from 23 runners at 3.65x the rate of chance.
Both Dylan Thomas and Found won as four-year-olds and, going back 20 years, the stable have run 26 three-year-olds for only the one placing – the absolutely magnificent High Chapparal running third in 2002.
Training the first three home is an impressive way to paper over the cracks but it might be noteworthy that 25 other Arc runners of all ages for the yard in the last decade have failed to land a place between them.
Luxembourg's role here and across the next 12 months looks an important one. The premature (by choice) retirement of St Marks Basilica has seen O'Brien very thin on the ground (again by his ridiculously high standards) in the top open-aged contests across Europe in a season where an almighty juvenile team has been left to do the heavy lifting.
O'Brien has had just 70 runners in Britain this season. Just four at Goodwood, five at York and one at Doncaster. And four of those ten were longshots.
Despite his menacing reputation, O'Brien continues to outperform market expectations in Britain, his 14 wins this season coming against 11 expected by the market and that figure improves 1.58 winners per expected winner in France.
La Parisienne
A very French name and through a very French race. The Vermeille was run at a crawl before developing into a dash home in which La Parisienne did extremely well to get as close as she did. Sectional analysis would hint at her being the best filly in the Vermeille which has performed best of the three course and distance trials in the last decade. Three winners - two of them Treve - from 12 runners through the Vermeille have won more than four times what they would be expected to by random chance. It's hard (or impossible) to draw anything to meaningful from such a small set of data but as punters we are left to make big inferences from little information all the time.
Fillies have often run well here but the winners have been exceptional - Treve, Enable, Zarkava and Danedream the 3yo fillies to win it in modern times. Sea Of Class, Sarafina, Taghrooda and Snowfall among those beaten that could claim to be much better equipped – at least for now – than La Parisienne but she will appeal to those who backed her last time and were left in need of some sectional healing.
Verry Elleegant
In the last 10 years there have been 32 Arc runners come via the Prix Foy and (despite Waldgiest doing the double) not one of them has improved their finishing position in October – beating 18.3% fewer horses in the Arc than in the Foy. A simple stat to make an even simpler point. The Arc is a much tougher contest than the Foy. But tougher, and a contest, is what Verry Elleegant wants and it's what she hasn't had in two (very) French runs to date. She settled last behind a farcical tempo in the Romanet and, having had enough of that, went on and set her own farcical tempo in the Foy. There were no excuses, the winner better than the bare result in the scenario, but that isn't Verry Elleegant's scenario – the mare having thrived on a strongly-run two miles in her finest hour.
According to Racing and Sports' database – the finest racing database that ever was a racing database – seven horses have run in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe after contesting the Melbourne Cup. That set have produced a winner (Marienbard) and have only slipped one placing on average from Melbourne to Paris. Those heading the other way, up to and including Arc-third Oscar Schindler - who was going to beat the Aussies up according to whoever was in the Matt Chapman role back in the early 90s (probably) - have slipped the best part of two places from Paris to Melbourne. So, the Melbourne Cup is harder to win than the Arc then... Lies, damned lies and statistics...
