Prixdelahorse Tracker - Milovent

I have been spending a lot of time looking at French hurdle form in the last few weeks as we begin slowly to build up towards the new National Hunt season. Auteuil is always the main focus for that in France, but as I have said many times before on this blog, you can spot some very talented horses outside of the Paris track and the latest one to catch my eye was Milovent. He made a winning debut at Pompadour in early August, but in a small field race on very fast ground, it was hard to really be overly sure what he had achieved when winning that race with relative ease under Geoffrey Re. However, after watching his 2nd start at Toulouse on Wednesday evening, I feel far more confident to say that he may well be capable of carrying his impressive form in the provinces to Paris or Compiegne over the Autumn campaign.

Trained by Arnaud Chaille-Chaille and Francois Pamart, this son of Joshua Tree cantered through the majority of Wednesday’s Prix Dominique Marcilhacy and once brought alongside the leader around the far turn, he always seemed likely to win. A couple of sketchy jumps to his right over the final couple of obstacles would have to be a slight concern, but he remains very lightly raced and I think that can mainly be put down to his inexperience. Although a winning margin of 18 lengths does flatter him slightly after Malfoy de Labrunie came to grief at the final hurdle, he was always in control under Geoffrey Re and there can be no doubts as to which was the best horse in the field. Conceding weight to 4 of his 5 rivals was no easy feat, but he seemed to enjoy the tactical battle on the first circuit and came alive once he was asked to close after jumping the 3rd from home. His dam (Ellovent) was a modest winner on the Flat and 0-2 over hurdles and I had to go back 3 generations to find a relative who had actually won a race over obstacles. It’s a modest pedigree, but Joshua Tree has a better than 50% win rate with his progeny over hurdles and is perhaps best known for being the sire of G1 winning hurdler Irish Point. There is no evidence at this stage that Milovent is going to reach anywhere near that kind of level, but he is a progressive 4-year-old with a perfect record so far. Having won races at Pompadour in early August and Toulouse on a cool September evening, he is likely to slip under the radar slightly, especially with Auteuil about to resume racing. That would be unfair, because he does look to be an exciting 4-year-old prospect and having won so impressively, his connections are likely to have little choice but to give him a bigger test at a higher level next time.