After two years of hurt, what are the prospects of a home revival in 2018?

The Arc’s sojourn in the magnificent surroundings of Chantilly is over after two years and, looking back at the results, there will perhaps be plenty of the town’s racing folk who can’t wait to get back on the road to Longchamp in 2018.

For the second year in a row French trainers managed only one win from the seven Group 1s across the weekend, and none on Sunday, with the biggest prize of all going abroad for the sixth time in ten years.

So how bad was it in the context of the last ten years, and are there any long term trends working against the home team when it comes to their showpiece weekend of the year?

2017 in context

Over the last decade, French-trained horses have accounted for 31 of the 70 Group 1 winners at the meeting which is, unsurprisingly given the geographical location, the most of any individual nation.

You don't have to go back to far to find years when the boot was very much on the other foot, with the home team bagging five of the seven top-level races in both 2012 and 2013.

Britain has an impressive 25 wins, while Ireland have weighed in with an average of one a year.

How many of the last ten of the main races have been won by the home team?

7 - Lagardere
5 - Opera
5 - Cadran
4 - Arc
4 - Boussac
4 - Foret
2 - Abbaye

The role of owner-breeders

As one of the pinnacles of the Flat racing calendar the meeting is a target for all the major owner/breeders in Europe.

In fact, the six main powerhouses have accounted for almost 50 per cent of the Group 1 winners on Arc weekend since 2008, though not all of their winners were actually the result of their own breeding operations.

Owner/Breeders Arc weekend record in Group 1 races over the last decade

9 - Aga Khan
6 - Coolmore
6 - Maktoum (Godolphin, Shadwell and Sheikh Ahmed)
4 - Wertheimer et Frere
4 - Khalid Abdullah
4 - Al Shaqab

What immediately strikes from the above list is how many of those entities operate in more than one country.

Taking the list from the top, eight of the nine winners to carry the Aga Khan's green silks were trained in France, though the likes of Zarkava and Shalanaya were bred in Ireland and could have been sent to John Oxx just as easily as Alain de Royer-Dupre or Mikel Delzangles.

It's a similar story with Juddmonte, Al Shaqab and the various Maktoum entities: each employs trainers in Britain, Ireland and France.

Indeed Enable's dam, Concentric, was a product of the Andre Fabre academy and few would argue that the seven-time Arc winning trainer might not have crafted a fine career for her had the Juddmonte team decided differently.

Enable powers away from the Arc field with her blistering trademark turn of footCredit: Alan Crowhurst (Getty Images)

The fact is that the partition of winners between where they are trained is something of an arbitrary business when it comes to these big owner/breeders.

The two exceptions in the list are Wertheimer et Frere – whose interests lie solely in France – and Coolmore, who have a small number of horses in training with Fabre and Jean-Claude Rouget but who have the vast concentration of their firepower housed with Aidan O'Brien at Ballydoyle.

Ballydoyle, Chantilly and the wheel of fortune

Aidan O'Brien enjoyed a fine return on his French adventures early in his career but has only really begun to return to those heights on Arc weekend in the last two years, sending out two winners at each meeting.

O'Brien frequently sends his best fillies to contest the Prix Marcel Boussac and it is no surprise to find that he has trained the winner three times in the last decade, a figure which surely would have risen to four had Happily not been rerouted to take on the colts in the Lagardere this time around.

Happily: pictured after winning the Jean-Luc Lagardere for Ryan Moore and Aidan O'BrienCredit: Edward Whitaker

The last named race has not been so much of a target for O'Brien in recent years, having dominated it in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It is perhaps no coincidence that France's period of relative dominance in the Lagardere has coincided with O'Brien's relative lack of interest.

The Chantilly challenge

The other obvious point to make is that the two near-whitewash years for France have coincided with the Arc's temporary relocation to Chantilly.

The two meetings took place on quite different ground yet both seemed to favour horses that could travel near to the pace but that stayed on well at the finish.

Despite the fact that Chantilly has a longer home straight than Longchamp, it seems it has not favoured the traditional French tactic of sitting in behind and riding a finish.

Perhaps the final piece in the jigsaw is just bad luck. Chantilly last year and Pau this year have suffered with illness but, more than that, the very best French horses have not made it to Chantilly for the country's biggest weekend.

Last year Almanzor ran at Leopardstown and Ascot but bypassed the Arc.

In 2017, Al Wukair might have developed into a real threat at middle distances, but injury in the middle part of the season meant that Andre Fabre has decided to keep to a mile with Al Shaqab's colt rather than step him up.

As Christophe Soumillon said so eloquently in these pages last week: "Winning the biggest races and riding champions is always the goal and, while it hasn’t happened quite so much recently, all the time I am riding for the best people and there is always the chance for that to turn around pretty quickly."

Arc day results and analysis

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