Diamond Necklace Lost Her Unbeaten Record – She May Be More Interesting Because of It
Defeat to Aventure at Deauville brought Diamond Necklace’s perfect sequence to an end, but the result should not diminish a four-time Group 1 winner. If anything, what happens next may tell us considerably more about her than six successive victories ever could.
There is something irresistible about an unbeaten racehorse.
Every victory extends the possibility that we have not yet discovered the limit, and with each passing race the record itself begins to acquire a significance which goes beyond the form. The horse is no longer simply winning; she is defending something, and those watching begin to treat the preservation of the sequence as an achievement in its own right.
Diamond Necklace arrived at Deauville carrying exactly that burden.
Six races had produced six victories, four at Group 1 level, and the sequence included the French 1,000 Guineas, French Oaks and Nassau Stakes. She had already answered questions about distance, class and older opposition, and by the time she lined up in the Prix Jean Romanet at prohibitive odds, it had become easy to assume that another answer would arrive simply because every previous one had.
Aventure had other ideas.
Christophe Ferland’s mare travelled strongly at the mile-and-a-quarter trip, quickened with authority and beat Diamond Necklace by two lengths, giving the three-year-old no obvious excuse and her trainer none that he was interested in offering. Aidan O’Brien’s assessment afterwards was admirably uncomplicated: his filly ran well and the winner was better.
There are occasions when racing analysis benefits from leaving matters there.
Aventure was already a mare of very high standing, having finished second in an Arc and won a Prix Vermeille, and her return to ten furlongs appears to have played to the greater speed she has developed as she has matured. Ferland described her as a champion afterwards, which might have sounded extravagant had her previous record not already supplied considerable evidence in support of the claim.
The mistake would be to turn Aventure’s excellence into an accusation against Diamond Necklace.
Unbeaten Is Not the Same as Invincible
Racing history contains enough exceptional horses who were beaten for the obsession with perfect records to be slightly strange.
A horse can lose because of ground, tactics, distance, pace, development, circumstance or, as happened at Deauville, because another very good horse happens to be better on that particular afternoon. None of those outcomes necessarily alters what the horse had achieved beforehand.
Diamond Necklace remains the winner of four Group 1 races.
The French Guineas still happened. So did the French Oaks. So did her victory over older fillies and mares in the Nassau at Goodwood.
Yet an unbeaten record creates its own mythology, and once the sequence disappears there is a natural tendency to reassess everything which came before it. Bookmakers lengthen prices, future targets become uncertain and conversations which had previously centred on how great a horse might become suddenly start asking whether we had overestimated her.
That reaction often tells us more about ourselves than the horse.
The unbeaten record was never the most interesting aspect of Diamond Necklace. Her ability to win important races over different distances and under different circumstances was what made her unusual, and Sunday did not remove that ability. What it did was introduce something she had never previously encountered in public: defeat.
How she responds is now fascinating.
The Best Horses Usually Need to Lose to Show Us Something New
There is an argument that horses reveal a different part of themselves after defeat.
As long as everything progresses perfectly, connections can continue along an established path. When the sequence is interrupted, decisions have to be made. Do they change trip, alter tactics, seek different ground or simply accept that the previous race contained a better rival and continue with the original plan?
O’Brien now has almost every option available.
Diamond Necklace holds Group 1 entries from a mile through to a mile and a half, and when asked about stretching her out in distance he did not dismiss the possibility. The Arc remains one route, although the market has understandably become more cautious, while there are numerous fillies’ races which would allow Coolmore to keep her against her own sex.
The temptation will be to view the next decision as a reaction to Deauville, but it need not be. Diamond Necklace has already demonstrated enough versatility for her programme to have required thought regardless of Sunday’s result, and the Romanet may simply have provided another piece of information.
What connections do with that information will be more revealing than the fact she lost.
Aventure Deserves to Own the Story
There is another reason for resisting the urge to make the Romanet entirely about Diamond Necklace.
Aventure won it.
Racing has an odd habit when a short-priced favourite is beaten of devoting more energy to explaining the loser than celebrating the horse who actually crossed the line first, and that would be particularly unfair here. Ferland’s mare did not benefit from some extraordinary mishap or tactical accident; she produced a top-class performance against one of Europe’s outstanding three-year-old fillies.
Her own career has not been perfectly smooth. She has known major-race defeat, including in the Arc, and came into this season with enough evidence for everybody to know she was very good without having the spotless record which captures wider attention.
Perhaps that is why Ferland’s description of her as a “real champion” carried some weight.
Champions are not necessarily horses who never lose. More often they are the ones who remain capable of returning to the highest level after they have.
Aventure has done precisely that.
Her programme now appears likely to keep her at ten furlongs, with the Prix de l’Opera and potentially the Breeders’ Cup on the agenda, and on Sunday’s evidence there is every reason to believe she can remain a major force through the autumn.
Diamond Necklace, meanwhile, begins a slightly different stage of her career.
Until Deauville, every race added another victory to the record. The next one will ask something new.
Can she come back after losing?
For all the excitement an unbeaten sequence creates, the answer to that question may tell us more about Diamond Necklace than 6-0 ever did.
The John Mills View
I have never been particularly worried about an unbeaten record disappearing, provided the horse loses for the right reasons, and I thought Aidan O’Brien handled Diamond Necklace’s defeat exactly as he should have done.
There was no attempt to invent an excuse because none was required. Aventure is an outstanding mare who has already been second in an Arc and won a Vermeille, and on Sunday she was simply better over ten furlongs. If Diamond Necklace had been beaten by an ordinary horse after running inexplicably badly, I might look at the result rather differently, but that was not what happened.
What interests me now is the trip.
Diamond Necklace has already won the French Oaks, so there is obviously no concern about a mile and a half from a basic stamina point of view, and I would not be surprised if connections eventually decided that returning to that distance allowed her to use more of what she has. At Deauville, Aventure had the greater speed when it mattered and there is no disgrace in acknowledging that.
I also think we are too quick to downgrade horses after one defeat. Before Sunday, Diamond Necklace had won six from six and four Group 1 races; afterwards, she had won six from seven and four Group 1 races.
That remains an exceptional record.
The next race is the one I want to see, because we already know she can win when everything is going her way. Now we find out what sort of filly she is after something finally hasn’t.
John Mills
Pro Racing Edge
