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, Sir 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 well-backed 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.

Alpinista, bred and owned by

Kirsten Rausing, has now won her last eight races — six at Group One level — in a sequence stretching back to April 2021.

Prescott, 74, has a reputation as one of the sport’s shrewdest planners thanks to horses such as Spindrifter, who won a then record 13 races as a two-year-old in 1990, and Masafi, who landed seven wins in 18 days in 2004, but Alpinista’s effort tops the lot.

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 said: ‘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.

Christophe Soumillon achieving an unpopular win, 48 hours after he had appalled the racing world by elbowing fellow rider Rossa Ryan out of the saddle, almost came off as his mount Vadeni powered into second. The scrutiny Soumillon has been under and his near-miss seemed to overcome the 10-time French champion jockey and he was in tears afterwards.

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’. The consolation prize for Dettori was victory on Ralph Beckett’s Kinross in the Prix de la Foret.

Hollie Doyle also won her first race at the Arc meeting when landing the Prix de l’Abbaye on The Platinum Queen.

But yesterday was all about entertaining storyteller Prescott, one of the keenest students of the sport’s history. The trainer, who says he would have liked to be a criminal barrister had he not gone into racing, has a wide range of interests including boxing, films and bullfighting.

By coincidence Alpinista, who could now go for the Japan Cup in November, became the first five-year-old mare to win the Arc since Corrida in 1937. Corrida is what the Spanish call a bullfight.

Prescott has needed to fend off questions about retirement in recent years and conceded that Alpinista’s win might be bad news for long-time assistant William Butler, who will eventually take over his stable.

Prescott said: ‘ Poor William will view this win with mixed emotions. It will probably keep me tottering on a bit longer.’

Butler will no doubt forgive the boss, who once said he would swim the Channel if he thought he could win the Arc. Last night he probably walked across it to return to his beloved Newmarket.