Pour Moi won the Epsom Derby on Saturday to give trainer Andre Fabre his first winner in the blue riband of the turf on his 10th attempt and France’s first since Empery won in 1976.
The winner, ridden by 19-year-old Mikael Barzalona, came late to win at 4/1 and beat 25/1 shot Treasure Beach by a head while there was disappointment for Queen Elizabeth as her race favourite Carlton House was third.
Barzalona, the youngest jockey since Walter Swinburn also 19 rode the legendary Shergar to victory in 1981, rode a sublime race bringing the winner from way off the pace but nearly blotted his copybook by raising himself in the stirrups and waving his whip in tha air before the line.
Fabre, seven-times an Arc de Triomphe winner and 22 times French champion trainer, normally a hard taskmaster refused to criticise his young rider.
“He won!” said Fabre.
“What surprised me about the winner was that he had two accelerations, first to catch up and then to go on and win.”
Michael Tabor, one of the winner’s part-owners and also of the second, was delighted though sad for the Queen, who was bidding to become the first reigning monarch to win the Derby since Edward VII in 1909 with Minoru.
“Obviously we wanted to win but if we hadn’t I would have loved the Queen to have done so,” said the former bookmaker.
“It’s one of those things. It was Utopian one could say this victory.”
The day had started dramatically as controversial Irish jockey Kieren Fallon lost a court case to ride Recital in the Derby.
The British appeal court granted an order sought by Ibrahim Araci, the Turkish owner of another runner Native Khan, to prevent Fallon riding because he had pledged himself to ride his horse and then switched.
AFP gjw
