French weekend headline: “Soumillon bluffe Auteuil”. Your English correspondent interprets this (literally of course) as France’s leading Flat jockey having se foutre de his jumping counterparts when running away with the Grande Course de Haies on Mandali.

Soumillon gives out some strange signals, most notably when pointing to his backside at Ascot one day – a gesture not well received by those in his rear.

Royal Ascot week bluffed the whole world that things are fine in British racing. Betting turnover was good; the racing was gripping and champagne fountained as huge crowds happily cheered home winners wherever they came from.

Actually racing in the UK is in turmoil as we gaze enviously across la Manche at the riches bestowed by the PMU. We are looking very nervously at this week’s emergency budget in Westminster. If the promised belt-tightening hits racing, next year's Royal meeting will be a much more sobre affair.

The performance of the five days came from France’s Goldikova in the opening Queen Anne Stakes though it was not that far in front of Andre Fabre’s similar Group One success with Byword in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes on the second day, Wednesday.

This was the master trainer’s seventh Royal Ascot triumph: The Queen Anne was Freddie Head’s first.

Olivier Peslier we have bowed to often on his Ascot trips – Goldikova was the seemingly eternally smiling French jockey's 14th Royal meeting victory. But Maxime Guyon was new to us and when we ceased misspelling his name (one misguided reporter mused whether “Maxine” was the French version of Hayley Turner?) we admired his assured handling of Byword on his first UK ride.

Byword had chased Goldikova home in the d’Ispahan; Paco Boy was only repulsed by Goldikova’s strength of purpose in the Queen Anne. They all may meet again in Deauville’s Marois where perhaps it is too much to hope for other Ascot principals Canford Cliffs and Dick Turpin, first and second in the St James’s Palace Stakes, turning up to make it the ‘Mile of the decade’. Makfi may be back for that too; he had a reported throat problem when losing his unbeaten record in the St James's Palace.

The frog that lodges in Aidan O’Brien’s throat escaped, and the Irishman's characteristically muffled responses gushed out after Starspangledbanner's stellar performace in the Golden Jubilee..

O’Brien was so over-excited it soon became apparent that this ex-Australian sprinter will not be returning in a hurry to take up stud duties for Coolmore Australia alongside his father Choisir. The Prix de l’Abbaye is likely to be his final port of call in Europe.

Football has, for once, united our nations against a common enemy – our World Cup teams (and Nicolas Anelka). Why racing should struggle for public empathy when it provides entertainment of the standard of Royal Ascot and the Arc weekend, as opposed to the miserable repayment made time and again by our overpaid footballing dilettantes, is beyond me.

No need to porter des oeilleres to regard the Investec Derby as being a greater advert for French bloodstock than the next day’s domestic Prix du Jockey Club.

Without a French runner or even a French-bred in the Derby one concluded beforehand that there might have been a lack of Gallic interest in Epsom: nothing could be further from the truth.

Record breaking (timewise) Workforce is a son of Darley’s Haras du Logis-based stallion King’s Best: runner-up At First Sight emerged from the mating of Galileo with Healing Music – her abode is another Calvados breeding establishment, the Haras de Bourgeauville.

And third home Rewilding was of course brought to a peak by Andre Fabre before being whisked off to Newmarket by Fabre’s bosses, Godolphin.

Jan Vermeer, fourth, destroyed his Saint-Cloud Criterium International field last November.

If Jan Vermeer, or any other foreigner, returns he will find France’s new champion Lope de Vega, named for the 16th century playwright, Spain’s Shakespeare, has rewritten the script for the season.

In the Poulains Lope de Vega, like Makfi at Newmarket, had been too strong for the foreign colts.

At Chantilly, Coolmore's Cape Blanco, conqueror of Workforce (who had a legitimate excuse) in the Dante, was thought well capable of handling the French. Instead he was manhandled back to tenth.

Lope de Vega is by Shamardal who won the same pair of Classics – Poulains and Jockey Club - for Godolphin.

And his Gestut Ammerland owners can savour victory where their Hurricane Run narrowly failed. And also recall that soon Hurricane Run went on to greater glory - but under the Coolmore banner.

Whither Lope de Vega? How soon before his sire’s owners come calling?

One meeting that may never happen is the championship match with Workforce. The nearest we are likely to get is the collateral form which places them upsides: Jockey Club second Planteur had beaten Rewilding in the Noailles.

Andre Fabre is saying that the Machiavellian influence on both sides of Lope de Vega’s family may make him too excitable for the mile and a half, which is Workforce’s destiny.

Remember 'Captain Cock-Up', the starter who wrecked the 1993 Aintree Grand National by failing to control his starting gate?

Time to look away for those Frenchmen who sniggered at our embarrassment; the start of the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris was an action replay.

Remember Rose, everybody’s favourite to land his second successive 'Grand Steeple', shot Christophe Pieux through his ears as the starter jerked the starting tapes across the horse's nose.

The elastic missed by a whisker but caused Remember Rose to prop and deposit Pieux.

Marx (Karl not Groucho) said all great events reappear – the first time as tragedy the second as farce. That Grand National narrowly avoided tragedy – the champion jockey was nearly garrotted by the tape: Pieux’s pride was the only thing damaged by the farcical fall.

Tragedy was reserved for losing punters though to their credit the turfistes didn’t lynch the starter and clapped the crestfallen jockey sympathetically as he gestured - je ne sais quoi.

The race didn’t get much better. The starter had been distracted by Mayeb’s can-can imitation at the rear and this one failed to set off: Slingshot was dismounted and pulled out of the race on the track.

'Ten green bottles’ (another arrête on the circuit) were left standing when Francois Doumen’s Pommerol, travelling well and prominently, fell at the moyen open-ditch: much-loved Louping’d’Ainay succumbed to leg injury; so Polar Rochelais, “playing only for places” according to trainer Pat Quinton, came home alone - led by the riderless Remember Rose.

Still, this was an unforgettable day not least for the stallion Poliglote, sire of Group One Ferdinand Dufaure winner Saint Du Chenet, surely a star of the future; and of Young Poli in the Group Two Barka Hurdle.

The day’s foreign challengers, Thousand Stars and Deutschland, both trained by Willie Mullins never looked like adding to the Irishman’s Auteuil accomplishments.

As many say Paul Nicholls is the Willie Mullins of UK jumping as put it the other way round - Mullins is the Nicholls of Ireland. Both are pre-eminent jump trainers with one difference; Mullins is a regular visitor to Auteuil while Nicholls ignores French jumping (except for jam-packing his stable with French-breds).

Nicholls doesn’t like the battered ground at Auteuil; Mullins is quite happy to send his best horses, two of which Nobody Told Me (2003) and Rule Supreme (2004) took the Grande Course des Haies, back to Ireland.

Coming to Paris is a family tradition stretching back to the days of Dawn Run trained by Patrick Mullins and winner of Irish, English and French Champion Hurdles before killing herself in 1986 on her second attempt at the Grande Course.

She also won the Barka for which Willie Mullins’s Thousand Stars and Deutschland line up this time.

“Both mine are good horses,” said Mullins. “Deutschland will like the ground and Thousand Stars not only won at Cheltenham (the County Handicap Hurdle) but finished third in the Irish Champion at Punchestown.”

The trainer might have added that Thousand Stars was third there to stablemate Hurricane Fly.

He would be too modest to point out that the six-year-old grey has improved no less than 50lb in the last year. The fact that Deutschland, a better flat horse, is two stone behind in the ratings shows what a task he faces.

It’s hard to co-relate French and British jump ratings and the British handicappers at this week’s classifications in London were still smarting from being exposed by such as Nicholls’s French import Sanctuaire (by Kendor) at Cheltenham.

On the face of it Thousand Stars' Irish Champion run puts him marginally behind Questerabad but were France’s champion hurdler ever to cross the Channel he would race from a 10lb higher mark in Britain.

Questerabad’s absence makes Thousand Stars the highest-rated runner in the Barka. He will be ridden by his Cheltenham partner Katie Walsh, sister of his usual jockey Ruby Walsh who is injured.

Thousand Stars, bred by Mlle Demercastel, by the little known Kendor stallion Grey Risk, won claimers at Longchamp and Chantilly for Philippe Demercastel and Richard Chotard in a largely undistinguished flat career.

He has been transformed over hurdles by Mullins.

“I prefer soft ground, it’s safer,” said Mullins referring to the guarantee of suitable terrain at Auteuil. “If the race suits, it suits, if not…well Questerabad’s absence definitely opens things up. But this is only the trial.”

Both Mullins’s French Champions were beaten in the Barka.