Prix Madame Jean Couturie - AL UQDA

Having already written about Al Uqda this season, I will try to keep this summary of Thursdays feature race relatively short. She has now won all 4 starts and having stated last time that I felt she would be more than capable of taking the step into pattern company in her stride, I did what any sensible punter would do and took her on. A silly mistake and one that I came to instantly regret as she stamped her class on what looked to be a relatively strong field. She ran the fastest opening furlong in 14.78s and the fastest closing furlong 11.46s and there’s not an awful lot to say about what happened in between because in truth, she dominated this race for the entire 2,000m. When they turned for home, she quickened under Tony Piccone, running 10.98s for the penultimate furlong and that burst of acceleration quickly had all of her rivals off the bridle and working hard to keep up. She’s now won all 4 starts and whilst I should note that Henri-Alex Pantall has been careful to bring her slowly through the grades, she looks to be improving with every run and there’s no reason to think that she won’t be able to add further success in Group company to her CV before the end of the year.

Let’s briefly discuss the rest. Francis-Henri Graffard ran both Benamira and Calamandra. The latter was disappointing, for the 2nd time I might add. She is a half-sister to Calandagan and that probably clouds my judgement a little, but she seemed very one paced in the straight and Mickael Barzalona didn’t look likely to be able to get her on terms at any stage. This was only her 3rd start and clearly she has time on her side, but she has a lot of work to do to win at this level, let alone to narrow the gap to the winner. Benamira ran a better race. She was dropping back from 2,800m and it showed as she was readily outpaced in the straight despite a prominent ride from Clement Lecoeuvre. She’s added some Black-Type to her CV and I’m sure that was the reason for the change in distance, but as a daughter of Waldgeist, softer ground and 12-furlongs look to be her optimum. Pinatique was given a patient ride and wasn’t able to get on terms either, but the same comments could apply to her last couple of starts and it’s hard to argue a case for her at this current point in her career.

I don’t want to be entirely negative about the rest of the field, so I’ll end on a positive note with the 2nd placed Thordis. She only has an All-Weather maiden win at Pau on her CV, but she has finished 2nd in a pair of Listed races now, staying on nicely on both occasions without quite having the pace to challenge. Having made her move on the far side of the group, she was only 0.06s slower than Al Uqda over the last 600m and has shown enough here to make me think that she could win a Listed race at some point. She is a daughter of Earthlight, but her 2 winning siblings both won races over 12-furlongs, as did her Grand-Dam (Truly a Dream) and she may well be capable of staying further than this 2,000m distance. Either way, given the way she has finished her races, it must be an option worth exploring for Francois Rohaut and his team.