Prix Altipan - Silius

The turf season got underway in Paris on Thursday with the Prix Altipan meeting at Saint-Cloud. On paper, this looked like being a very competitive renewal of the race but what it turned into was a rout as Silius buried this field to win by over 4 lengths under Maxime Guyon. He had fitness on his side after a run in the Class 2 Prix Solow on the PSF at Chantilly in January, but this effort has got to be considered to be close to a career best from the 4-yea-old son of Dubawi. There are lots of caveats needed with this performance. He had a recent run and he has a very good record at this time of the year having won 3 times at Cagnes-Sur-Mer in the winter season of 2025, a run that culminated in victory in the Listed Prix de la Californie. Although he didn’t win again in 2025, he did hold his form and was beaten by some very good horses. Having chased home Maranoa Charlie in both the Prix Djebel at Deauville and the Prix Paul De Moussac at Paris Longchamp, he followed that with a 3rd placed finish behind the Prix du Moulin winner Sahlan at Deauville in August. I should probably also add that he should have won the Listed Prix Tantieme over this course and distance in November when Maxime Guyon tried to get him across to the stands rail and allowed Trust On to get first run on him. Silius has readily reversed that form in this race, admittedly in receipt of 1.5 kilos from Trust On, but there’s no obvious reason given the distance between them that the form would be overturned next time.

Now you may be thinking that this horse sounds familiar and as you can see from the related articles below, I have already covered him this year back in January. In fact, the last line of that piece reads "he is one of the more exciting prospects running at this time of year and perhaps the Prix Altipan at Saint-Cloud will be on his agenda". I'm not a race planner for the Wertheimers (sadly) but this race looked to be a good fit and he has more than delivered.

It’s early in the season and the ground is still holding on to the water from a very wet winter, but a reading of 3,9 on the penetrometer has certainly be worse in recent years for this meeting and would probably be considered to be no worse than “Soft” if it was being measured in UK terms. The field split into 2 columns over the opening furlong and I think Guyon made the right choice to track the free running Instant Fragile into the turn. Once asked to go past when they straightened up for the judge, Silius found plenty and the McLloyd Data shows that he reached a top speed of 60.3 km/h in the straight as he went on to assert. I do have a slight doubt about those in behind given that Instant Fragile held on for 2nd place despite running freely and clocking the fastest furlong in the race when he recorded 11.60s at the end of the back straight. Fast Tracker looked badly in need of the run and was beaten with 400m to run. He has some solid form in the book at this level, but I will forgive him slightly given it was his first run of the year and in 2025 he took a couple of runs to get to peak fitness. However, whilst that case can be made that the others struggled to close on the early leader and Fast Tracker was quite frankly lacklustre, I don’t think the performance of Silius should be underestimated and if there is a horse in this year’s Prix Altipan that is capable of making his mark at a higher level, it is him.