Prescott’s Arc glory as Alpinista reigns
Winning trainer hails the best day of his life
GOING into the Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Mark Prescott described past experiences of disappointing, losing trips to France as his ‘Dunkirks’.
Yesterday Alpinista gave Newmarket’s longest-serving trainer his VE Day with a magnificent half-length victory in Paris in Europe’s most prestigious race. Prescott described it as ‘the best day of my racing life’.
The 20-runner race looked fiendishly competitive and was preceded by a cloudburst which turned Longchamp into a swamp, but it went like clockwork for the wellbacked 7-2 favourite under jockey Luke Morris.
Sitting pretty a furlong out, Alpinista beat Vadeni half a length, with 2021 winner Torquator Tasso a neck further back in third. Alpinista never looking like she would be overhauled. Bred and owned by Kirsten Rausing, she has now won her last eight races, six at Group One level, in a sequence stretching back to April 2021. Prescott had resisted the temptation to run the mare in last year’s Arc and said: ‘It is the best day of my racing life. I always thought it was when I got a winner on my first ride when I was 16 when it supposedly had no chance.
‘I thought that was the best 10 minutes of my life, but this is every bit as good.
‘Alpinista has improved every single run in the last two years. She has been faultless and the jockey has also been faultless.
‘The race went like a dream. If she hadn’t been mine, I would have thought she was going to win every inch of the way, but when it is your own it is a nightmare.
‘It’s hard to imagine a better day if you are a racehorse trainer.’
Morris, 33, has now won eight group races but conceded he had to hold back tears after his victory. Riding in his first Arc, Morris added: ‘In the last week or so I must have watched the last 25 Arcs and I have never seen any jockey sitting still at the furlong pole. Alpinista is extremely special.’
The early pace was set by Japan’s Titleholder, who faded into 11th, four places behind Aidan O’Brien’s Luxembourg, who never threatened.
Frankie Dettori, chasing a seventh Arc win, reckoned thirdplaced Torquator Tasso’s wide draw in stall 18 had not helped but conceded that the first two were ‘too strong’.
Hollie Doyle also won her first race at the Arc meeting when landing the Prix de l’Abbaye on The Platinum Queen.