Camille Pissarro rode the rail around the turn and burst through an inside gap with 250 yards left to race, and went on to win the Prix du Jockey Club by a half-length over Cualificar on Sunday at Chantilly.
Ryan Moore, winning his second Prix du Jockey Club – France’s Derby – made all the right moves on favored Camille Pissarro, taking up a stalking position behind the vanguard and saving ground all the way around the 1 5/16-mile Prix du Jockey Club’s one long right-handed bend. Stuck behind a wall of horses with a quarter-mile remaining, Moore came around fast-fading Bowmark, dipped inside Camille Pissarro’s pace-contesting stablemate Trinity College and, under strong urging, guided his Ireland-based mount to a second Group 1 victory in France.
Camille Pissarro shipped last October to Longchamp and captured the Group 1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere. He returned there May 11 to finish third of 16 in the one-mile Poule d’Essai des Poulains, the French 2000 Guineas, won by his Aidan O’Brien-trained stablemate Henri Matisse. The Poulains as much as anything set Camille Pissarro up for an improved performance over a longer trip and O’Brien, winning his second French Derby, had his colt ready to peak on the day.
O’Brien’s first French Derby winner, St. Mark’s Basilica in 2021, won the French Guineas before the Prix du Jockey Club. Ioritz Mendizabal rode St. Mark’s Basilica, Moore’s previous tally in the French classic coming in 2014 with The Grey Gatsby.
Moore had to wait a full furlong to find a spot for his mount, but Camille Pissarro proved a willing partner and displayed more than adequate acceleration – and gameness – to hit the hole with full force and power to the finish.
The Andre Fabre-trained Godolphin colt Cualificar, who attended the pace, stayed on well for the place while unable to quite match Camille Pissarro’s turn of foot. Detain, in from England for co-trainers John and Thady Gosden, loomed in upper stretch and briefly held a lead before going just slightly flat in the very late stages to settle for third.
Trinity College, Camille Pissarro’s pacehelper, held solidly to finish fourth, with 50-1 shot Azimpour, who also lacked clear homestretch passage, coming on for fifth.
Camille Pissarro paid $6.80 in America. Owned by Michael Tabor, Derek Smith, Mrs. John Magnier, and Peter Brant, Camille Pissarro is by Wootton Basset and out of Entreat, by Pivotal.
Royal Ascot next month doesn’t have a suitable Group 1 race for Camille Pissarro, unless the colt can cut back to a mile in the St. James’s Palace Stakes, and a test against older horses this summer in a race like the 1 1/4-mile Eclipse might offer his next real chance for top-level success.
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