Cirrus Des Aigles looks increasingly likely to provide the most serious opposition for Frankel at Ascot after a consummate victory in the Prix Dollar at Longchamp.
Corinne Barande-Barbe’s six-year-old is perhaps the most popular horse in France, as a humbly-bred gelding competing against – and usually beating – the famous operations and he is the current holder of the British Champion Stakes.
Cirrus Des Aigles was expected to need his first outing since May, when he was subsequently disqualified in an ongoing investigation into a positive substance found in a sample from the Prix d’Ispahan, but he was not even remotely tested as he cantered past the post nine lengths in front.
Winner of the Group Two contest in 2010 and just touched off 12 months ago, he was sent off the 4-5 favourite and simply stretched further and further away from the Godolphin runner Hunter’s Light.
“It’s not very often that you get to see exactly what you want, but that is what happened today,” Barande-Barbe said.
“I think that was a very good workout for Ascot and the Champion Stakes.”
Cirrus Des Aigles, who is 5-1 second-favourite for the Champion Stakes with Coral, is a gelding and thus ruled out of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
“It was all very easy for me today and it’s very exciting to be going over to England to race Frankel,” jockey Olivier Peslier said.
“In England they have Frankel and in France we have Cirrus Des Aigles. He is a very popular horse over here.
“I think because he was gelded, he’s been running for a long time and people get to see him a lot.”
There was to be no British joy at a fixture which has often served the cross-Channel raiders well, with many struggling in the saturated conditions.
Shirocco Star, touched off in both the English and Irish Oaks, was denied by a whisker yet again in the Prix de Royallieu.
Frankel’s owner Prince Khalid Abdullah, who runs Sea Moon in the Arc, was greeted by a winner in the Prix Chaudenay when the David Smaga-trained Canticum (11-1) eventually unravelled the considerable lead acquired by the enterprisingly-ridden outsider Les Beaufs.
Dermot Weld’s Pale Mimosa fared best of the overseas challengers to be fifth.
