TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/998879
home of the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby) and Prix de Diane (Oaks), and for two years in 2016 and 2017 played host to the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe while Longchamp was renovated. Oddly, Chantilly is not twinned with Newmarket—that link has been handed to its Parisian neighbours Maisons-Laffitte and Le Mesnil-le-Roi—but there are major similarities between the behemoths of the training centres in their respective countries, not least the fact that Chantilly's racing origins have a distinctly English connection. It would be some 50 years after the first Classic races were established in England that Chantilly would follow suit, under the guidance of Lord Henry Seymour, from 1833. The inaugural Prix du Jockey Club was staged three years later and by that time Chantilly, like Newmarket before it, had been transformed from a royal hunting ground to one with a distinctly more competitive raison d'être. Thoroughbreds have now been readied there continuously for almost two centuries, with the training grounds stretching from beyond the thriving Chantilly hub to its neighbouring villages of Lamorlaye, Gouvieux, and Coye-la-Forêt. The once long-winded Société d'En- couragement pour l'Amélioration des Races de Chevaux en France, formed the same year that Chantilly started to establish itself as France's Thoroughbred capital, eventually became much more easily known as France Galop. This all- encompassing administrator and ruler of French racing also owns the training