Sunday, April 18th. Newbury’s Dubai Duty Free weekend saw an ‘imitation’ of last summer's Deauville Prix Morny – the Greenham (Group 3).

The result – Dick Turpin beating his better-fancied stable companion Canford Cliffs – did no more for the Morny form than the runner-up in that race Special Duty’s defeat in the Imprudence.

But there were any number of conflicting signals from the British trials at Newbury and Newmarket last week.

Canford Cliffs, though downed, finished a long way ahead of Morny winner Arcano this time.

And the fillies were contrary too for though Puff was only fourth to Special Duty in Newmarket’s Cheveley Park last autumn, she reversed the form with two of the fillies ahead that day, Lady Of The Desert and Misheer in Newbury’s Dubai Duty Free Stakes (formerly Fred Darling).

Now Puff will be given the opportunity to take on Special Duty in the 1000 Guineas – though her chances of staying the Newmarket mile look remote on breeding.

Canford Cliffs doesn’t look a stayer either so the only 2000 Guineas threat to the favourite St Nicholas Abbey is surely Elusive Pimpernel.

He took Newmarket’s Guineas trial, the Craven with authority prompting veteran trainer John Dunlop, a wise owl who considers his options carefully, to nominate another crack at St Nicholas Abbey as the next objective.

Elusive Pimpernel was runner-up to the Ballydoyle Guineas’ favourite in the Racing Post Trophy.

The Prix du Jockey Club is Dunlop’s future plan of campaign – “Depending on how he performs in the Guineas I think the trip and the course at Chantilly should suit,” he said.

Eight of the 40 declared runners in the 2010 Grand National were bred in France.

The two topweights Madison du Berlais and Mon Mome are French products.

Mon Mome began his career at Pontivy and took ten tries in Britain before becoming a winner: Madison du Berlais was claimed from Guillaume Macaire at Auteuil and has gone on to better things with the Pipes.

Some said what was the point of running Mon Mome (Fr) in the Grand National last year? A French-bred steeplechaser hadn’t won the world famous race for a century; he started at 100-1; and his stable’s jockey chose another runner.

French relations have been fostered by Mon Mome, twelve-length 2009 National hero, and so many other imports but civil war may have broken out if Fergus Wilson Britain’s most eccentric and passionate racehorse owner, had been denied a run with his Cerium (Fr).

Wilson’s horses have a habit of finishing last in the top races but Cerium by Vaguely Pleasant defied odds of 125-1 and excelled himself coming home fifth to Mon Mome.

But his rating hasn’t risen and whereas he slipped in on bottom weight last year, he looked like missing out as a mere reserve this time.

Yet Fergus Wilson took out his other runner, Mr Pointment, and another absetee allowed Cerium to join the run.

Last year Cerium was kicked by a faller; Wilson often gets slandered as cracked in the head but it was his horse who suffered a fractured skull.

Wilson, a 60-year-old multi-millionaire property dealer who sat alongside the Beckhams in the country’s rich list until the property crash (and ‘Posh’ Becks’ new perfume line took off) had a sudden inspiration in the new century: buy horses in France who were past their sell-by date but still had high enough ratings to qualify for the National, the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle – the races he had ambitions to win since childhood.

The British establishment - authorities and media - were infuriated at Wilson’s finesse: the market for French-breds with potential was taking off and here was somebody throwing a spanner in the works, buying cheap and flying high.

Wilson wasn’t fazed that his horses were tailed off – Mr Pointment and Cerium were 8th and tenth (last) in this year’s Gold Cup – Cerium only beaten 61 lengths, three lengths nearer than he finished in 2009.

But leading Irish jockey Davey Russell was impressed enough to ask for the ride again in the National.

None of this tallies with Wilson’s acute business philosophy (he and his wife Judith, in whose name the horses run, were once maths teachers) or the amounts he used to pay out for racing pigeons (he won the feathered friends ‘Grand National’) - way above what his racehorses cost.

But how do you apply logic to someone who’s runner in New Approach’s Derby, Maidstone Mixture (finished last) having warmed up by winning a hurdle at Strasbourg when trained by Richard Chotard?

Cerium began his career in more distinguished company than Mon Mome or Madison du Berlais, finishing second to Balko for J-P Totain in the Wild Risk Hurdle.

He then went to Paul Nicholls for a king’s ransom before moving on to Wilson for very little ransom at all.

Though a true Brit, Wilson is first and foremost an outspoken maverick.

“French trainers should get the guillotine out and decapitate the English handicapper who goes out of his way to ensure that French horses do not get a run and the National is won by a British or Irish-bred.

“When I purchase a horse from France I first check the rating with the English handicapper to ensure it will have a rating high enough to get a run. However, when I’ve concluded the purchase the handicapper lowers the rating ‘to give it a chance’!

“He gives it such a ‘good chance’ that it will not get a run.”

“My idea sprung from the failure of Amberleigh House to be rated high enough to get a run for the 2002 the National even though he’d been good enough over the Aintree fences to win the Becher Chase.”

Here Wilson might have added that Amberleigh House started at 150-1 in his first National attempt – he won it of course two years later.

Before the declarations were presented on Thursday Wilson said: “Frenchmen should not let the heart rule the mind but if they have a heart it should be devoted to Cerium on 10th April.”

He thundered: “The English are still fighting the war of Joan of Arc and Napoleon. The English do not forgive the French! The English do not play on an even playing field! The Treaty of Rome is ignored.

“We intend to enter him for the Grand Steeplechase de Paris.

“I ask French journalists whether Cerium would be fairly treated in France and not treated in the way that the English treat French horses?”

It will not be a century before the next French-bred winner of the world’s most famous race, the Grand National, but after last year’s success – the first for a hundred years – les Français failed to make an impact on the 2010 renewal.

Of the nine who took part the 2009 winner Mon Mome fell and only last year’s fifth, Cerium, and Piraya got home, 11th and 13th of fourteen finishers from forty starters.

Cerium, owned by Britain’s answer to Don Quixote, may return to the land of his birth for a tilt at the Grand Steeple.

Old Vic, sire of the winner (and the second), one-time Prix du Jockey Club laureate, returned home to Ireland after a spell in Japan.

In the opposite direction Toyota cars were recalled by their Japanese manufacturers because of faults: Old Vic had failed as a stallion.

Over jumps he has been a success – this was his second National winner after Comply Or Die.

“I don’t enjoy anything unless I’m winning,” said winning jockey (at his 15th attempt) AP McCoy, thereby giving away his credo and the reason for his outstanding success.

The result, victory on his boss JP McManus’s Don’t Push It, was one of the fables the Grand National invariably throws up – McCoy holds all the records for a jump jockey save, before Saturday, a Grand National on his CV.

Recognized the world over as the best jump jockey of all-time, the lazy fellow has no record in France. Within 24 hours of his lifetime's achievement McCoy (Anthony or AP please - not Tony) was back in the saddle at lowly Southwell - like a Tour de France winner cycling down to the local boulangerie next morning for his croissants.

Don’t Push It pulled up in a hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival – the success stories from there were failures at Aintree, apart from Big Buck's.

The French-bred staying hurdle champion confirmed his position in the Liverpool Hurdle.

The son of Cadoudal was runner-up in the Alan du Breil in his youth and this seven-year-old has an unbeaten run of eight over hurdles.

He would be ideal for the French Champion Hurdle but his trainer has an animosity towards Auteuil.

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.