TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/920057
Stakes many moons before. Against all odds, the two old folk clicked and conceived a fine colt, who was given the magnificent name of Tiberius Caesar. Prepped for the Deauville sales in the last year of the French franc, he was sold for 1.1million of the things. It was a great day, and an even greater evening: I'd sold my first yearling some 50 lots before – also for pots and pots of francs – and, in celebration, Julian introduced us to his favorite drink, a piscine de provence – literally, a swimming pool of rosé, the flinty pink wine poured over a fist-sized goblet jammed absolutely to the brim with ice. That might also have been the night the four of us, to dispel a momentary indecision, ordered every single dessert on the menu. Paris-Brest, ile flottante, crême brulée, crême caramel, mousse au chocolat, crèpe Suzette, pêche melba, profiterôles au chocolat, tarte aux pommes à la mode, tarte tatin, clafoutis, tarte au cit- ron. And lots of Chantilly. There may have been oth- ers. Ah, yes, my waistline remembers it well. A few years passed. High points for Tiberius Cae- sar included him winning a one-mile Group 3 race in Bremen by an astounding 11 lengths. But soon, as it will, his formed tailed off, and then, so too did he. As a seven-year-old he was sold to Sweden where the softer competition was still not soft enough and he was dispatched to the claiming ranks in France where, in 27 more unsuccessful starts stretching un- til the age of nine, he was bought and sold four or five times eventually descending to a mark of just 20 – equivalent to about 44 on Timeform figures. Not quite Black Beauty pulling the coalman's dray with poor old Ginger, but not far from it.