Memories of late Le Havre returning with Leffard among the aspirants in a stallion-making Classic

There was something quite auspicious about the story of Leffard that was told by Jean-Claude Rouget this week.

The trainer has great affection for Sunday's Prix du Jockey Club and his six wins so far make him the most successful of his contemporaries in the Chantilly Classic. 

In 2009, his first helped him to finally overhaul Alain de Royer-Dupre and his eternal rival Andre Fabre to secure a maiden championship, banishing any lingering suspicions he was simply a numbers man earning easy pickings away from the serious competition in Paris. 

Rouget's victor that day was Le Havre. The handsome dark bay was bought by the trainer for €100,000 at Arqana on behalf of owner Gerard Augustin-Normand, who later admitted that the yearling “winked at me from the sales ring". 

The financier named Le Havre after his home town and it was this horse who sparked his ceaseless love for racing, for all that he never competed again due to injuries sustained in the race. 

It turned out that Le Havre – out of a half-sister to Polar Falcon, the fine sprinter-miler and sire of Pivotal – hardly beat an exceptional field that day, but it was a smooth win under Christophe Lemaire that left the impression of more to come.

Jean-Claude Rouget has shown great expertise at purchasing champions from the salesCredit: Zuzanna Lupa

He proved an excellent Classic-winning stallion but died from health issues aged 16, without a successor. Leffard is from his final crop and was selected by Rouget back at Arqana's summer jamboree for €150,000 in 2023 from Haras du Cadran.

"When I bought him, I immediately thought of a partnership between Gerard Augustin-Normand and Antonio Caro, for whom I won the Prix du Jockey Club in 2016 with Almanzor," Rouget told France-Galop's website.

"Furthermore, he is a son of Le Havre, who also won the Jockey Club in 2009 for Gerard Augustin-Normand . . . and Leffard looks just like his father. Everything is going well so far. I hope it continues on Sunday."

It's a family that Rouget, who will be making a poignant return to the Jockey Club after suffering from illness over the last year, clearly likes.

He has now trained three siblings, winning a Listed race over an extended nine furlongs with Sippinsoda, for joint-breeder Ecurie Melanie. Leffard is out of Let's Misbehave, an unraced three-parts sister to Derby winner High Chaparral. Her sire, Montjeu, had shown his first true indication of stardom in the 1999 Jockey Club.

Rouget picked out the Prix de Suresnes at Chantilly, a race he has used as a springboard for other Jockey Club winners Ace Impact and Sottsass, and Leffard is quite a big price for having run on very nicely to finish just in arrears of Nitoi, the Siyouni half-brother to Hong Kong Vase winner Junko, without being given a hard time. 

Rouget also fields Tipinso for a partnership between Augustin-Normand and Ace Impact's owner Serge Stempniak, but the Pinatubo colt has a lot to find on ratings.

"He might have been able to win, but that wasn’t the goal," the trainer added pertinently of Leffard.

The French authorities took the decision to shorten this Classic to an extended mile and a quarter in 2005. It now offers, as sacrilegious as it feels to state, a far more confident chance of the Chantilly winner receiving a safe position in a Flat stud than those from Epsom.

It's largely fashion, of course, and we hope for influential sires to continue to emerge from the Derby, as they did in the old Jockey Club, but there have been more hits than misses since Shamardal repelled Hurricane Run two decades ago. 

Shamardal's son Lope De Vega was able to stretch Jockey Club glory into three generations when his latest Ballylinch protegee Look De Vega followed in his hoof prints 12 months ago.

Sunday's edition does, once again, have as many interlocking themes as your average Australian soap opera.

Nitoi himself seems likeable but it can't be a tremendous omen for him that Fabre and the Wertheimer family have supplemented another Siyouni, the unbeaten-in-one Sinileo. Retained rider Maxime Guyon's pick is a grandson of the brilliant Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud winner Plumania and whose Galileo-sired dam has already been red-hot.

Vadeni: Already a Jockey Club winner by Churchill for the Aga Khan StudsCredit: Zuzanna Lupa

Fabre, meanwhile, trains one of the most eligible future stallions in the field for Godolpin in Cualificar, another son of Lope De Vega out of the Oaks winner Qualify.

The Aga Khan Studs did more to propel the career of Coolmore's Churchill than any other breeding operation when Vadeni gave him a first European Classic success here three years ago, and the leading contender in the green silks is another by that same sire in Ridari. Out of a Prix de l'Opera winner, Ridasiyna, he was one of a number to catch the eye in a typically rough-house Poule d'Essai des Poulains.

In that same unlucky category were two by Wootton Bassett, with completely contrasting breeding. Camille Pissarro does not exactly have a stamina-packed distaff side as a half-brother to two top sprinters in Golden Horde and Line Of Departure, but he did finish nicely for third in the Poulains. Then again, if you liked his run then you cannot discard Detain, who was closing fast just in behind and whose best-known sibling is St Leger runner-up Arrest. 

Camille Pissarro, for Coolmore, and Juddmonte's Detain are both racing for superpowers but were purchased from smart independent Irish breeders, respectively CN Farm and Swordlestown Little.

So Wootton Bassett has both ends of the spectrum to work his magic with here. Coincidentally, the catalyst to his vertiginous rise was Almanzor coming through from his first crop. Which brings us all the way back to Rouget once more.

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