Prix du Cabinet Lassus - Sternle

I’m a purist at heart and whilst I enjoyed the Prix du Jockey Club card at Chantilly on Sunday, I still found this evenings card at La Teste more appealing. French racing follows a simple pattern and the ability to watch provincial maidens in the early June sunshine is what draws me in. It’s the thought of being one of the first people to see something out of the ordinary. It won’t always work. For every Ace Impact and Lazzat, there are plenty of Parliament’s (Sottsass half-brother, last seen running over hurdles for Tim Vaughan). That brings me nicely to the performance of STERNLE.

A 2-year-old maiden race being won by a horse that bounces out and makes all is nothing new, especially in France. However, the fact that both the 2nd and 3rd had experience and solid form in the book from a maiden at Bordeaux would suggest that this wasn’t a case of a precocious type beating a field of Fillies that weren’t ready. Sternle bounced out under Guillaume Trolley de Prevaux, clocking a top speed of 61.5 km/h. Sent on at halfway, she ran 12.70s for the 3rd furlong which allowed her to establish a 6-length lead as she headed for home. That margin remained the same all the way up the straight and with the other 6 jockeys rowing away with 400m to run, she galloped on to win impressively. A winning time of 1:14.31 was 0.31s faster than the Colts and Geldings race over the same course and distance 35-minutes later and her final 3-furlongs were run in 36.09s, just 0.87s slower than the boys despite the fact that she was around 9-lengths in front of them at the top of the home straight.

She is a Far Above filly out of Blitzle, a Toronado filly who won a pair of juvenile races for Ollie Pears in 2019, reaching a peak British rating of 72. Owned and trained by Doris Schoenherr, she’s from the family of Dylan Thomas and given that both her Dam and Grand-Dam won as 2-year-olds, it’s perhaps not a complete surprise that she has shown a fair degree of precocity. We need to add the context that this was an €11,500 maiden at La Teste rather than Chantilly, but the time and the manner of her victory were very eye-catching. Volkonskha (2nd) and Hepburn (3rd) were both beaten less than 2-lengths by Cath Hoche at Bordeaux and she ran perfectly well to finish 3rd in a Class 3 event at Paris Longchamp last week to confirm that form. We will probably learn a lot more on her next start, but early speed and the ability to quicken around a bend will mean that there are lots of options open to a 2-year-old filly like Sternle and she is worth adding to the tracker as a result.