From the Rails

The Arc, Paris and a pilgrimage I wish I was making again

There will be thousands of British racing followers heading for Paris this weekend, and I have to admit that I am slightly envious of every one of them.

I made the journey to the Arc six years running during the 1990s, and when I think back to those weekends it isn’t necessarily the horses I remember first. It is the journey, the people you met, the atmosphere around Paris and that wonderful feeling on Arc morning when seemingly half the British racing world had descended on Longchamp.

One particular trip in 1994 probably sums it up better than any other.

Back then the Cambridgeshire at Newmarket was run on the same weekend as the Arc, rather than the week before as it is today, so our racing weekend had effectively begun while the coach was still making its way from Dover towards Paris.

Among the passengers was a chap I already knew. We called him Paul the bookie because he had a betting shop just outside Dover which we’d occasionally visit if we happened to be in the area, and Paul decided there was no reason why a coach journey to Paris should interfere with business.

Following racing on the road was rather different in 1994. There was no smartphone in your pocket showing every price available, no betting apps, no live results and certainly no internet search to settle an argument. We had the Sporting Life, the form in front of us and several hours on a coach to work out what we wanted to back.

A few tins of beer helped the studying process along.

Fortunately, we also had Paul.

He agreed to honour the Ladbrokes prices advertised in the Sporting Life, and I’d already taken a liking to Halling for the Cambridgeshire. I’d seen him run previously and fancied him strongly, and from memory Paul laid us 12/1 from the prices printed in the paper.

I managed to persuade my mate Gareth to come in with me and we had our bets.

Then we had to wait.

That is probably difficult to imagine now. The Cambridgeshire was being run back in Britain while we were travelling towards France, but we had no way of knowing what had happened. There was no screen to refresh every thirty seconds and no phone to pull from your pocket.

It wasn’t until Saturday night, after we’d arrived in Paris, that we managed to telephone a friend of mine back in Britain and ask him the question we’d been waiting hours to have answered.

What won the Cambridgeshire?

Halling.

He’d won under Frankie Dettori for John Gosden and eventually returned an 8/1 co-favourite. Our 12/1 with Paul suddenly looked rather good, and the Arc weekend was off to an excellent start.

Sunday at Longchamp

The following day belonged to the Arc.

Longchamp is one of those racecourses that has to be experienced to be properly appreciated, particularly on Arc day. Paris seems to become part of the meeting itself, and with thousands of British racing followers making the journey across the Channel there was always an atmosphere quite unlike anything else.

That year the Arc went to Carnegie, trained by André Fabre and ridden by Thierry Jarnet, who beat Hernando in a tremendous finish.

Gareth and I had managed to back Carnegie as well.

In fact, the precise details of every bet have disappeared somewhere over the intervening 32 years, but I remember that we’d had a remarkable run with Paul over the weekend. He seemed willing to lay them and we seemed to keep backing winners.

I don’t know whether Paul had a particularly successful weekend financially.

I know I did.

What we didn’t know was exactly how much he owed us. Paul wasn’t going to be settling accounts in the middle of Arc day, so that little pleasure would have to wait until everybody climbed back aboard the coach for the journey home on Monday.

Which left us with Sunday evening and Monday morning in Paris.

We celebrated accordingly.

Monday morning in Paris

By Monday morning Gareth and I were still enjoying ourselves and eventually found ourselves wandering along the Champs-Élysées, knowing that at some point we really ought to start thinking about the journey home.

Our fellow passengers were already thinking about it rather more seriously than we were.

There were people on that coach who wanted to get back to Calais with enough time for some last-minute duty-free shopping. Gareth and I, meanwhile, discovered a few local bars and then a supermarket where we encountered a particularly welcoming lady offering samples of wine.

We took our responsibilities as visiting British racegoers seriously and gave her selection a thorough examination.

Eventually we emerged to discover that the coach was rather keen to get moving.

We didn’t miss it.

We weren’t particularly popular when we finally got on it, either.

Once we were safely aboard and heading back towards Calais, Paul eventually made his way around the coach and settled the weekend’s bets. Until that moment we hadn’t really known what the final figure would be, only that we’d backed enough winners to know it should be substantial.

It was.

By the time everything was counted, we’d won something like four or five times what the entire weekend had cost us.

And in those days I seem to remember being able to do the whole Arc trip for around £120.

One final surprise

When we reached Calais and boarded the ferry for Dover, Gareth and I headed straight for Club Class.

I’m a Dover boy born and bred, and back then quite a few people I’d been at school with were working on the ferries. As luck would have it, the man standing at the entrance to Club Class that evening was an old school friend.

I had my winnings in my pocket, so I folded up a nice £50 note, slipped it into his top pocket and told him that we might be joined by a few people from the coach.

“Make sure they’ve got everything they want.”

He cheerily obliged.

I’d offered the upgrade and champagne partly as a peace offering after we’d held everybody up in Paris, although perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that only a handful accepted.

Those who did join us made the most of it.

Champagne was consumed, cucumber sandwiches disappeared and, by the time we were approaching Dover, we’d done a fairly respectable job of drinking the place dry.

Eventually I found my old school friend and asked him how much I owed him.

His answer has stayed with me ever since.

“You’ve done enough for one day. Thanks for the money. Enjoy your trip.”

That was it.

We’d left Dover with a Sporting Life, a few quid in our pockets and no idea what the weekend would bring. We’d backed Halling in the Cambridgeshire, Carnegie in the Arc and somehow found a few more winners along the way. We’d celebrated our way around Paris, annoyed a coachload of people, won four or five times what the trip had cost us and finished the whole adventure drinking champagne on the ferry home.

It was a hell of a weekend.

Thirty-two years later

Perhaps that is why I was tempted to go back this year.

I looked seriously at making the trip for tomorrow’s Arc, but the cheapest option I could find, travelling from London on Eurostar, was £799.

However much I love the Arc, I couldn’t justify it. For that sort of money you are getting close to what you could spend on an all-inclusive week somewhere in the sun rather than a racing weekend in Paris.

So tomorrow I’ll be watching from the comfort of my sofa.

I think that’s a shame, because Longchamp remains one of the great places to watch a horse race. I’ve been fortunate enough to experience plenty of memorable afternoons there, but the pinnacle for me came a year after our Carnegie adventure when I watched Lammtarra and Frankie Dettori win the 1995 Arc.

There are race meetings you attend and there are racing occasions that stay with you.

The Arc belongs firmly in the second category.

Could this finally be William Haggas’s year?

Tomorrow’s race gives us plenty to think about, but there is one story in particular that interests me.

I’ve always had tremendous respect for William Haggas, as I have for Sir Mark Prescott, under whom Haggas served as an assistant. Prescott finally won his Arc with Alpinista in 2022, but for Haggas there is still some unfinished business at Longchamp.

He came agonisingly close in 2018 with Sea Of Class.

Drawn 15, she was dropped towards the back before producing that extraordinary finishing run under James Doyle, only to fail by a short neck to catch Enable. It remains one of those Arc performances that makes you wonder what might have happened with a kinder draw.

Eight years later Haggas returns with another three-year-old by Sea The Stars, Maltese Cross.

He has progressed throughout the season, finishing second in the Derby before winning the Grand Prix de Paris over tomorrow’s course and distance and then the Great Voltigeur at York. Unfortunately, the draw has done Haggas no favours again, with Maltese Cross having to start from stall 11.

That makes life difficult, although certainly not impossible.

Daryz deserves enormous respect as he attempts to win the Arc for a second successive year, while Kalpana arrives with a much better preparation behind her than she had when finishing seventh twelve months ago. There is the Japanese challenge again, and in a race of this nature I would never completely dismiss anything Aidan O’Brien sends into battle. Trying to second-guess what Aidan is thinking when he has several pieces on the board is generally a dangerous occupation.

If you forced me to choose one, though, I would love to see Haggas do it with Maltese Cross.

That’s not a tip. In an Arc containing horses of this quality, there are several perfectly capable of winning it, and stall 11 has unquestionably made his task harder. It is simply the result I would most like to see.

Perhaps there is a little symmetry in it as well. Sea Of Class came from stall 15 and almost gave Haggas his Arc eight years ago. Now another son of Sea The Stars gets his opportunity from another awkward starting position.

We will find out tomorrow whether this one has a happier ending.

Thirty-two years after that remarkable weekend, almost everything about following racing has changed. The Sporting Life has gone, the Cambridgeshire and Arc no longer share the same weekend, and the bookmaker who happened to be sitting on your coach has been replaced by a betting shop carried around in everybody’s pocket.

Yet tomorrow afternoon, when they turn into the Longchamp straight with the Arc there to be won, I suspect it will feel remarkably familiar.

I just wish it didn’t cost £799 to be there.

If you’re having a bet tomorrow, good luck. If you’re fortunate enough to be at Longchamp, enjoy every minute of it.

Happy days racing. Speak soon.

— John Mills