TDN Weekend

ing the strengths and weaknesses to be measured in a distant reckoning: the un- corking of the crop, in the sales ring and on the racecourse. Often, come the day, all those months of planning and nurture have proved a waste: sample after sample soured, headache after headache. Recent vintages, however, have produced a glo- rious effervescence – and an intoxicating sense that French bloodstock is regaining its lost élan. Two farms, from very different start- ing points and with very different agen- das, have somehow fallen in step to help lead this revival. One was steeped in his- tory, as the nursery of many champion thoroughbreds. Go into the office at Ha- ras d'Etreham today and you see faded black-and-white photos of two full-sisters reared here by the Comte de Chambure: Djebellica and Montenica, by Djebel out of Nica, respectively winners of the 1951 Irish Oaks and 1947 Prix de Diane. The manor house is baronial, approached by endless avenues of trees, and surround- ed by an estate village of sandstone staff cottages and stabling. One of the most momentous single days in modern history found its epicen- tre just three miles away, at Omaha Beach on D-Day. But this place is redolent only of continuity. The Comte's son, Rolande, became one of the most influential and imaginative men in the international bloodstock community, together with Alec Head introducing French blood to Kentucky and for 20 consecutive years making Etreham the leading consignor at the nearby Deauville sales. Yet while his son Marc continued the hegemony for a while, Etreham had begun to reflect the stagnation of the local breeding industry by the time Marc's 26-year-old nephew, Nicolas, took over five years ago. The old estate was being challenged at every turn by start-ups and upstarts: plac- es, in fact, like Haras de la Cauvinière. Al- beit itself one of the older studs in France – with steep tiling, dormers and finials round the stallion yard – Cauvinière had been devoted to showjumpers and thor- oughbreds for a generation before its re- vival under new ownership in 2006. Under Sylvain and Elisabeth Vidal, Cauvinière joined the likes of Coulonces, Monceaux and La Motteraye in ambitious moderni- sation in the consignment of French year- lings. By 2011, the same year that Nicolas de Chambure acceded at Etreham, things were going so well here that Sylvain Vidal summoned his compatriot Mathieu Alex – a former colleague at Coolmore, where both had learned the ropes – to help su- pervise the young stallion who had just started there at a fee of €5,000. Le Havre had been unable to race again after crowning a short but brilliant career in the 2009 Prix du Jockey Club. His owner Gerard Augustin-Normand had named the horse for his hometown and, with a rap- idly expanding stake in the French Turf, was eager to buck the defeatist trend that had in recent years seen nearly all international stallion prospects exported (and caused corresponding migration by French mares). True to their Coolmore ed- 27

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