French Recruits - Sacre Chef

There will be plenty of big name purchases on the list this year and as hard as Dan Skelton and his team have worked to recruit horses in the last 2 years, I still get the overriding sense that Willie Mullins simply does it better. However, if we take Closutton out of the equation, then there is no doubt in my mind that the best recruitment is going on at the Skelton yard and I have a small hunch that in securing SACRE CHEF, they might have recruited a talented horse.

The form of his victory at Machecoul in March may not suggest that and it has to be said that the horses who chased him home in that €4,000 contest haven’t exactly done their part to boost the form. However, Sacre Chef really caught the eye with the way that he finished off his race and having crossed the line over 3 lengths clear of the rest, it would be fair to say that he was comfortably the best horse on show regardless of how the form has worked out in the interim period. He is a Karaktar gelding bred by Karine Perreau and the Colsons. His dam (Tazkar) was a winner over hurdles for Davide Satalia in the French Provinces and a daughter of Authorized. Karaktar has a 62% win ratio with his progeny over hurdles in the UK and Ireland, of which Il Est Francais and Kala Conti are perhaps the most high profile names. He does have a reasonable record with his progeny on the Flat in France and a quick search of the France Galop site found 20 winners on the level in recent years.

He raced just behind the leader at Machecoul in March in what appeared to be a steadily run race over an extended 1-mile and 6 furlongs, but once the sprint for home began, Sacre Chef was easily on top as he bounded clear inside the final furlong. A winning time 3:43.86 was 14s slower than the AQPS race run over the same course and distance, but the slow early pace would account for that and it would boost the strength of the form to my eye given the distance that he was able to put between himself and the rest of the field in the closing stages. This is a hunch, but because this horse was bought out of a provincial flat race in early March, there is quite a reasonable chance that Sacre Chef will slip under the radar when we start to discuss the more promising recruits in a couple of months time. We don’t have sectional timings for racing at Machecoul and the limited amount of racing that the track has means it can be quite hard to build an accurate assessment of the ground based on the times. However, if we use the AQPS race on the card as a guide, a furlong average of 14.2s would suggest that the ground was on or around “good to soft” in UK terms.

He was sold out of Nicolas Paysan's yard shortly after his victory in March and has joined the champion trainer to run in the colours of Colm Donlon. A 3-year-old hurdle campaign is clearly on the cards and it will be no surprise to see him appear in a juvenile hurdle in the early autumn. If he can translate the ability and the turn-of-foot that he showed on his debut over hurdles, there should be plenty of opportunities for Sacre Chef to make his mark.