GRAND PRIX DE VICHY - Zaydann

I was quite keen to take on Zaydann in Wednesday night’s G3 Grand Prix de Vichy and duly tipped Casapueblo to beat him in the feature race of the Vichy Summer Festival in my At The Races column. Zaydann was on an unbeaten run, but he appeared to take a long time to reach his top speed on his latest start in Bordeaux and in a small field I felt he could be vulnerable to a faster turn-of-foot. At the top of the home straight I was fairly happy with my position and Pierre-Charles Boudot seemed to have Casapueblo in the ideal position behind the leader. He did little wrong and was beaten by less than a length, but that doesn’t the whole story of the race and I could not have been more wrong about Zaydann and the speed that he was capable of reaching. Settled towards the rear of the 5 runner field, there was a brief moment where it seemed like Mickael Barzalona had got the fractions wrong, but then Zaydann lengthened his stride and the turbo kicked in as the son of Dubawi reached a top speed of 67.3 km/h, closing with impressive final furlong splits of 10.69 and 10.98s to beat Woodchuck by half a length (Source: McLloyd).

This victory completed a remarkable 5-timer for Francis-Henri Graffard’s 4-year-old, who has risen steadily through the grades since making his debut over a mile at Saint-Cloud in March 2025. His Listed victory in the Prix Lyphard on the PSF at Deauville in November had taken a few knocks as a piece of form, but having returned from a 6 month break to win the Grand Prix de Bordeaux in May, albeit in receipt of 3-kilos from Horizon Dore, he has now taken his form to an entirely different level. He is a grandson of the great Zarkava and the Aga Khan Stud have enjoyed such incredible success with this family that it can’t be entirely surprising to find that Zaydann has proven to be a pattern class performer. He is certainly still improving and given that he is still an entire, there may still be some ideas around the possibility of turning him into a stallion at some point.

That raises some interesting questions about where he might go next. He is on an unbeaten run and clearly thriving as a 4-year-old, but he has also been relatively well placed in the last year and beating Woodchuck and Casapueblo by less than a length, both of whom are slightly short of Group 1 level, still leaves him with something to find at the top table. He holds an entry in the G3 Prix Gontaut-Biron HKJC at Deauville next month and we are likely to learn more about him in that race than we did in the Grand Prix de Vichy. That race has plenty of entries from the UK and should give us a better guide as to the level of form that Zaydann is capable of. He was wildly impressive on Wednesday night and is certainly one of the more exciting 4-year-olds in France and having passed every test that has been presented to him so far this year, I don’t want to detract from what Zaydann has achieved so far. However, there are stiffer tasks ahead and he will need to find a few further kilos of improvement before he can be considered to be in the same category as some of the other leading performers that these connections have been enjoying success with.