Impassioned reactions to Longchamp and The Everest may be overstated

Longchamp was probably not what the great Australian art critic Robert Hughes had in mind when he wrote The Shock Of The New but it is a phrase that seems to sum up reaction to France's flagship racecourse after the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe quite well.

The return of the Arc brought thousands of British and Irish racegoers back to the revamped track and, as has been well documented since, the reaction to it has not exactly been one of unalloyed enthusiasm.

Not that there were quite the same number of thousands present on Sunday. Louis Romanet, speaking at the International Federation of Horse Racing Authorities' annual conference the following day, was careful to compare the attendance of nearly 35,000 to the crowd figure for Chantilly last year rather than the 50-odd thousand present when Golden Horn won the last Arc at the old Longchamp.