10 May 2017
Wednesday, May 10, Boulogne. - 119 horses entries were received for the 2017 renewal of the Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (Gr1) to succeed iron mare Found (Galileo). The entry ticket is worth €7,200, far less than the €120,000 due to supplement on September 27th ! It is the largest field at this stage since the 120 entries of the 2011 edition.
Among these are 50 horses trained in France, 29 in Great Britain, 27 in Ireland, including 22 for the sole title holder Aidan O'Brien, 5 horses from Japan - including the local champ Kitasan Black (Black Tide) -, 6 from Germany, one from Poland and one from Argentina. Among the owners, the Godolphin team, from the Emirates, as entered 22 of its horses in the €5m race.
The generations conflict is fairly balanced since there are 54 3yo colts and 11 3yo fillies compared to 54 older horses. The oldest in is the 7-year old Nippon Satono Noblesse (Deep Impact), a stable companion of Satono Diamond (Deep Impact), who beat Kitasan Black in the 2016 Arima Kinen (Gr1), also traind by Yasutoshi Ikee.
The Argentinian entry is the best horse in training in South America since Sixties Song (Sixties Icon) won both the Carlos Pellegrini (Gr1), the Latin-American version of the Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, and the Gran Premio Latinoamericano (Gr1) in Chile ... Va Bank (Archipenko) is a 5-year-old imported from Ireland to Poland where he won ten consecutive races before suffering his first defeat last year. It is partly ownd by Team Valor, whose manager said in early April in the Racing Post that their ambition was to run in the Arc and the Melbourne Cup (Gr1), a month later in Australia.