France's new 'superstable' makes perfect sense - but is it a sign of the future in Britain and Ireland?

There is a cycle in sport, as in every other facet of life, whereby initial shock quickly turns to a sense of wonder that the thing that was recently so surprising hadn't in fact happened years ago.

That pattern has played out over the last ten days with the news that Jean-Claude Rouget, European racing's most successful trainer by number of winners, is to join forces with Jerome Reynier. One of the chief fascinations of the story is the question left hanging in the air: is this the wave of the future?

The likely total number of horses housed between Reynier's base at the Calas training facility near Marseille and Rouget's two yards in Pau and Deauville is around 250, which is a large number but by no means unusual in modern racing.