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Saturday, April 3rd 2010. This correspondent’s first outing of the Paris jumps’ season (how did Eurostar survive the winter without me?) coincided with the overthrow of Questarabad in the Hypothese last Saturday.
Auteuil’s Press room was as hospitable as ever – British equivalents are generally stark and suspicious places nowadays and the very idea of the Daily Mail’s correspondent kissing his equivalent from the Sun or the Mirror would turn heads – and stomachs.
My dictionary tells me ‘hypothese’ very nearly means ‘assuming’ and the assumption in Paris-Turf (miserably disappeared from the Brompton Road news stand) was Questarabad – “il ne devrait pas être battu”.
The “unbeatable” was duly downed by three of the other twelve runners.
The winner Vitray had been ‘murdered’ by Questarabad on three previous occasions but not this time.
Vitray is brother of former French Champion Hurdler Le Sauvignon who was reputedly the second coming when he arrived in Britain in 2001 but was chased across the Channel by Jaïr du Cochet and clobbered by him at Kempton (Boxing Day 2002).
There was no obvious reason for Questarabad’s downfall.
Early betting in the concluding Arthur Veil-Picard suggested a hero of the past, Zaiyad, would not revive former glories.
I saw Zaiyad win his first race on the flat at Pompadour four years ago – and he’d been off for nearly three of the succeeding years, until returning last month to finish last at Saint-Cloud.
Paddock inspection didn’t give much encouragement but somebody “knew” and Zaiyad’s price halved in the minutes before his commendable victory.
We Brits, bar Vitray’s owner David J Jackson (also Le Sauvignon’s proprietor), had little to shout about – and any comparison with prize money on offer at two UK jumps meetings on Saturday and the one in Paris was cringing.
Nor could we be carried away with the remarkable victory of England Dictator in the claimer.
This three-year-old’s background is completely French and, to a novice visitor, his triumph a complete mystery.
Unraced, unloved in the betting (until a late collapse of his odds) and carrying topweight of 68kg, the juvenile was in trouble turning for home yet won running away.
What’s he worth now? Surely more than the £25,000 at which he was retained.
Great to be back at Auteuil; at least next weekend the prize money for our Grand National meeting at Aintree will save our blushes – not forgetting that the top two in the weights, including last year’s winner Mon Mome, are French-bred.
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Frogwatch, by Rolf Johnson 
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