The French racing season always begins on March 15th and closes on
November 15th, the four intervening months being occupied with
cross-country sport, which is often of the highest interest, as there
are so many valuable prizes to be won that it answers the purpose of
owners to pay very high prices for horses that have figured to advantage
on the flat. Thus, there is a steeplechase of £5,000 representing
genuine added money, while, in addition to this one, there is another
(the Grand Prix de Nice) of £4,000, and there are several others that
range in value from £2,000 to £1,500 each. No wonder, therefore, that
cross-country sport in France is very prosperous, and that the class of
horse running is much better than it is in England; but, none the less,
genuine sportsmen hail the advent of the flat-racing season, which has
begun auspiciously enough, so far as actual sport is concerned, though a
shadow has been cast across its track by the additional misfortunes
which have befallen M. Edmond Blanc. It will be remembered that his
formidable stable was visited last year by an epidemic which struck down
all his best three-year-olds (Val d’Or, Jardy, Adam, and Genial), and
deprived them of their best races, notably of the Derby, which Jardy or
Val d’Or could either have won, and of the Grand Prix de Paris, which
Val d’Or had “in his pocket.” It is true that Val d’Or recovered his
form after the Grand Prix, and beat Cicero, at a difference of 3 lb., in
the Eclipse Stakes, but he went amiss again after that, and nothing more
was seen of him or of Jardy, the latter of whom nearly died after
running when unfit in the Derby. But it was hoped that the mischief had
been stamped out of the stable, so that we should see Val d’Or, Adam,
Jardy, and Genial coming out as four-year-olds in their best form, and
that two of them would be sent over to England to compete for the
£10,000 prizes in which they were engaged. But this hope has to be
abandoned, at all events so far as Val d’Or and Adam are concerned, for
they have both gone amiss, or rather have met with an accident which has
made it necessary to remove them from all their engagements. The mishap
to Val d’Or is all the more provoking, because it is understood that he
was doing remarkably well, and it is, comparatively speaking, a slight
compensation to M. Blanc that he should have since sold Val d’Or to an
Argentine-Republic breeder for over £20,000, as he would have fetched
that and more after his racing career was over. The case of Adam is not
less vexing, for this brother to Ajax was always regarded in the stable
as being better than either Val d’Or or Jardy, and he, too, had done
well since last season, until he met with the accident which has brought
his racing career to an abrupt conclusion. Adam has not up to the
present found a purchaser, and he has gone to M. Blanc’s famous stud,
where he will rejoin his brother Ajax and his sire, Flying Fox.
Whether M. Blanc will do as well this season with his three-year-olds as
he did last year and the two preceding ones remains to be seen, but the
odds are that he will not, and if he gains a victory in one or other of
the French classic races it will probably be with one or other of his
two fillies, Blue Fly and Belle Fleur, while the former may possibly
come over to England and run for the Oaks at Epsom, though she would
have powerful opponents to quash in Flair and Waterflower, both of whom
would have the advantage of being on their own ground. It is a great
handicap for a horse to have to make the journey across the Channel, as
we have so often seen, but there will be no representative of the French
stables in the Derby this year. Whether Jardy will come over later for
the Gold Cup at Ascot, or the Princess of Wales’ and the Eclipse Stakes,
will depend, of course, upon the progress he makes between now and then,
but there is another good race in which Jardy can run at home, there
being the Prix de President de la Republique of £4,000, with no
penalties or allowances, which is run for at Maisons-Laffitte, and in
which such English celebrities as Pretty Polly and St. Amant are
engaged. It will be remembered that Pretty Polly’s sole defeat was
sustained in France, when she was beaten by a French colt that ought
never to have finished in front of her, and it will be interesting to
see how he fares when he meets her again in July, always provided that
the encounter does not take place a month before at Ascot.
The three-year-olds in France this season do not appear, with two or
three exceptions, to be more than moderate, the best of them all being
Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt’s Prestige, a colt by le Pompon (bred by M. Edouard
Blanc) who has won all his engagements, seven as a two-year-old and four
this spring, in most decisive fashion, but he is not, unfortunately,
engaged in any of the “classic” races at home or abroad; the best of the
others being M. Edmond Blanc’s Blue Fly who ran second to him upon one
occasion, and who is in the French Derby, the Epsom Oaks, and the Grand
Prix de Paris. She would be favourite for the Chantilly Race were there
any betting on future events, and she is well bred enough for anything,
being by Flying Fox—Bluette, dam of that good horse Omnium II. The best
of the colts engaged in the French Derby are Organiste, the property of
M. de Brémond, whose colours were carried at Epsom seven years ago by
the ill-fated Holocauste, who fell and broke his leg, and Ganelon II.,
who is owned by Count de Moltke; the latter colt is a grandson of St.
Simon, his sire, Lauzun (by St. Simon—Merrie Lassie) having been bred by
the King at Sandringham, and having won a good race or two before being
sold to a French breeder. Ganelon II., who is one of the first of his
get, looks like being a credit to his sire, for he has now won all his
three engagements in a canter (beating, in one of them, Organiste), and
gives one the impression of being a colt of high class, though Organiste
may have made more improvement from two to three, as he was very
backward when he finished second to Ganelon II. last autumn.