“I think we all had our doubts at some stage,” Harry Herbert, the winning owner’s racing manager, said after Treve had become the first dual winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphehere on Sunday since Alleged in 1978. “There were downs and depressions, maybe she’s not trained on. But not once did the trainer lose faith. Not once.”

Vindication for Criquette Head-Maarek, the trainer who never stopped believing, came in a two-length defeat of Flintshire and the favourite Taghrooda that was in its way even more impressive than Treve’s five-length thrashing of the field 12 months ago. She was just 2-1 to follow up this year immediately afterwards but eventually set off as an 11-1 chance with British bookmakers having finished second, third and then fourth in her three previous starts this season. On Sunday, though, she never looked likely to finish anywhere but first.

Thierry Jarnet, who rode Treve round the outside last year, hugged the rail this time and was going so well throughout that, as Head-Maarek said afterwards, “I could see in the false straight [before turning for home] that she was going to win.”

The four-year-old, almost certainly running her final race, pulled her way to the front a quarter of a mile out and, as soon as Jarnet asked for an effort, she quickened into an unassailable lead. Flintshire, Taghrooda and the St Leger winner Kingston Hill, who finished fourth from the outside stall, all ran with credit but the most open Arc for many years had already turned into a one-horse race.

“The boss is really happy,” Dettori, who is the retained jockey to Sheikh Joaan al-Thani’s Al Shaqab Racing, said afterwards. “This is the Treve of old. Unfortunately every time I rode her she wasn’t like this but today the way she travelled and quickened was exactly like last year.”

Head-Maarek acknowledged afterwards that it had not been easy for Sheikh Joaan to replace his principal jockey on his favourite horse.

“It’s not easy to tell Sheikh Joaan not to rule the filly out of the Arc [after the Vermeille] after what he was hearing,” Head-Maarek said, “because a lot of people said she has gone, she’s no good, she was a good three-year-old but she hasn’t trained on. I asked him to have faith in me and let me do it the way I want and he said OK. It was not easy to take the decision on the jockey and I explained it, I said, sir, I need someone that I know well and that knows the filly well. He said, OK, you take all the decisions, he was a fantastic man for that and I will never forget it.

“For me it was important to have Thierry back on the day of the Vermeille and today. He told me after the Vermeille that maybe she should be retired. I said, ‘Thierry, no. If you come back in 10 days, you are going to ride a different horse.’”

This was Criquette Head-Maarek’s third success in the Arc, a race she won for the first time with Three Troikas, another filly, in 1979. Her grandfather Willie also sent out an Arc winner, in 1947, while Alec, her father, saddled the winner four times. As if to underline the Heads as the first family of French racing, Criquette also took the card’s Group One Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère with Full Mast, while Freddy, her brother, sent out We Are to win another Group One, the Prix de l’Opera.

“It was not a surprise. I always had faith in her but I thought it would be more difficult than last year,” Head-Maarek said. “With all the problems we had had, everyone was very tricky with me, saying she shouldn’t run and should go to stud.

“For me this is the best race I have ever won. After England [when Treve finished third at Royal Ascot in June] she was stopped for a month with back and feet problems. When you prep a horse with problems and bring her here and she wins the way she did it, it’s amazing. It’s a dream.”

fonte : The Guardian