Written in the stars? All eyes are on Paris

Wathnan Racing’s red-hot weekend just kept on getting better. After Hit Show’s spectacular Dubai World Cup triumph and Serene Seraph’s victory at a wet, cold and windy Keeneland, attention turned to Paris in the springtime, where Map Of Stars was running in the Group 2 Prix d’Harcourt on Sunday. The race has been run since 1929, and serves as the traditional stepping stone to the Prix Ganay, the first Group 1 race of the French racing year. Among those to have run in both is Map Of Stars’s ‘grandmother’, Urban Sea, who in 1994 won the Harcourt before being placed third in the Ganay – and then found lasting fame through her son, Galileo.

Map Of Stars had begun his four-year-old campaign with a cosy victory in the Group 3 Prix Exbury at Saint-Cloud, and was now returning to ParisLongchamp, where he had won his only race as a two-year-old. On the day, he put in a dominant performance under Wathnan Racing’s retained jockey James Doyle, swooping clear in the final furlong to remain unbeaten in 2025.

Group 3, Group 2, Group 1 – it has a natural kind of ring to it, doesn’t it? If Map Of Stars can indeed win both the Harcourt and the Ganay then it may well be time to start shooting for the stars and aiming at the long-term target of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the most prestigious all-aged race in Europe, held back at ParisLongchamp on the first Sunday in October.

The map there would take in a couple of Europe’s most important summer middle-distance races on the way. That’s one of the great things about owning racehorses – it gives you the chance to dream, doesn’t it…?