PRIX ALLEZ FRANCE - SUNLY

PRIX ALLEZ FRANCE

Saint-Cloud - 1st May 2026 - “Bon 3,2”

4YO+ G3 (F) - 2,000m - €36,600

2:04.44 (Réduction KM 1:02.22)

On paper, this looked like being a very strong renewal of this race and that’s exactly what we served up on Friday afternoon at Saint-Cloud. To add a little context to the strength of this form I think it is important to look at the form of the placed horses. Tajlina (2nd) won a G3 here last March and has hit the frame in 4 consecutive pattern races, Light the Ghost (3rd) won a G3 here in October on her last start, Cankoura (4th) has won 4 of her 9 starts to date including a G3 at Deauville last August, Azaniya (5th) has won 4 races for Owen Burrows including 2 Listed races in the autumn and Indalimos (6th) was a G3 winner at Deauville in August. That’s a very impressive roster but it was largely irrelevant on Friday afternoon because on her first start for 292 days, SUNLY beat all of them and did so with some degree of authority.

Having been off the track since last July, when she was beaten a short-head by Qilin Queen in the Prix de Malleret at Paris Longchamp on Grand Prix de Paris day, she would have been entitled to need this run and had she hit the frame, her connections would no doubt have been delighted. However, having traveled nicely into the straight, I thought that Sunly showed a great attitude under Christophe Soumillon as she finished strongly down the outside of the leaders, closing with furlong splits of 10.88 and 11.60s according to the McLloyd sectional data. That figure of 10.88s at a top speed of 65.7 km/h gave her the fastest figure of any of the 9 runners as she ran out a relatively comfortable winner by a length and a quarter. A reading of 3,2 on the penetrometer made this the firmest ground that she has encountered so far and judging by the way that she rolled around under Christophe Soumillon in the penultimate furlong, I would suggest that she would almost certainly prefer it to be slightly softer underfoot. However, she rallied well to win for the 4th time in 5 starts and appears to be over the issue that kept her off the track in the latter part of last season. If she comes out of this race fit and healthy, then there is no reason to think that she cannot resume the progress that she showed last season and she holds entries in both the Prix Corrida and the Grand Prix de Chantilly at the end of this month. In the long term I am sure that the Juddmonte team will be hoping that they can land a G1 with her and if the last year has taught us anything, it is that her trainer is undoubtedly the best trainer in France to achieve that goal and Francis-Henri Graffard will almost certainly have a plan.