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Lest I sound grudging after a day when we had all hoped for the Queen to have her first Derby victory, let me add that I had in fact backed Pour Moi and that I believe Mickael Barzalona’s ride showed us not just an instinctive genius in the saddle but also a jockey with astonishingly cool nerves for any age. He and André Fabre had planned to run the race the way Pour Moi did, letting most of the field coast ahead of him, then picking them all off from the rear. As Fabre confessed, when planning such a tactic it was a relief to find there were only 13 horses in the race. But setting out to win from the rear is one thing; actually carrying out such a precarious manoeuvre in your first Derby is quite another. Barzalona is a precocious talent and he should delight us for decades.
We already knew there was something special about the youngster whom Fabre has nurtured since he was 16. Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin team have swiftly begun using him as an understudy to Frankie Dettori, and Barzalona impressed when he popped over to Newmarket this season and rode a couple of winners on his first day there. Let us hope his talent does not become distracted: one mature lady of my acquaintance, after seeing weighing-room pictures of the dark-haired young jockey (who could easily pass for 14), expressed her willingness to take him home and tuck him up in bed. I don’t think it was reading him bedtime stories she had in mind.
Sometimes the fact that this column appears on a fortnightly basis is a frustration, especially when there is a big race coming up but too many unresolved questions thwart discussion 12 days ahead. This time it was a relief not to be writing in advance about Epsom. With the nation rooting for Carlton House to give the Queen the first Derby winner for a reigning monarch since Minoru won for King Edward VII in 1909, I would not have enjoyed pressing the claims of the French entrant against her. But I felt instinctively that Pour Moi was the business. I believe horses have to stay to win the Derby and there was no question in Pour Moi’s pedigree, since he is by Montjeu out of a Darshaan mare. In his previous race he had shown formidable finishing speed, always a key asset in a Classic, and, crucially, an unusually assertive André Fabre had for the first time ever brought a Derby candidate to Epsom for a trial run around Tattenham Corner.
Carlton House’s minor injury during Derby week compounded my instinct. When you talk to great trainers and read their memoirs it becomes clear what fine-tuning is involved preparing a horse for big races, on the Flat or over jumps. The smallest setback can frustrate calculations. The year Jimmy Fitzgerald’s Forgive ’n Forget was favourite for the Gold Cup the race was delayed for more than an hour by snow. Asked afterwards why he had failed to win, Fitzgerald declared, not totally tongue in cheek, ‘My horse was trained to the minute and by the time they finally set off he was over the top.’
The real puzzle is why it has taken 35 years since Empery’s victory in 1976 for the French to win another Derby. Four reasons occur: France has no track resembling Epsom, few French races are contested pell-mell the way the Derby is, few French jockeys consequently excel at Epsom and finally in recent years with the ‘French Derby’ — the Prix du Jockey Club — taking place the same weekend, French entries for Epsom have been dwindling. Now the statistics board has been rewritten handsomely by Pour Moi and young Barzalona. The only sadness is that it was at the expense of Carlton House.
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