Horses in action at the annual Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Picture: Christophe Archambault/AFP
The first Sunday in October is when the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is contested – Europe’s top race for all-age horses.
Everyone in the game dreams of winning what the French say is “not a race, but a monument”.
But, for one unfortunate jockey, dream became nightmare when he was chucked into jail as a direct result of his triumph at Paris’s Longchamp racecourse on the Bois de Boulogne.
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The Arc has been won by horses trained in France, Britain, Ireland, Italy and Germany. Notably absent from the roll of honour are the major racing nations of America and Japan, with the latter having been runner-up three times.
No Australian horses have won it, either, though a number of jockeys from that racing-mad land have.
After World War 2, Australian jockeys arrived in Europe in numbers and many were very successful – like Bill Williamson, Scobie Breasley and Rae Johnstone.
One of the more talented and popular of these wizards of Aus was a ginger-haired bloke named Billy Pyers, who had won seven Adelaide jockey championships by the age of 24.
Recruited to ride in France in 1964, he hit the ground running by winning the UK’s 2,000 Guineas classic on 20-1 shot Baldric. Later he partnered the great filly Dahlia to victory in the King George at Royal Ascot and in the Washington DC International.
In 1967 Pyers won the Arc on Topyo – not a popular result as the horse started at 80-1! Then Billy was arrested and slung into a prison cell.
It turned out he had been recognised on television in the Arc aftermath by a woman whose car had collided with the jockey’s a year earlier. Though Pyers had driven the woman home and ascertained she was not badly injured, he didn’t know he was required to report the crash to the police.
The woman later started suffering pain as a result of the prang.
The matter was eventually sorted out and Pyers was released after a week. He told reporters his time behind bars was not too bad and the nicest chaps he’d met inside were “two Russian spies”.
A later jail spell, after a drunken driving episode, also got media attention when prison warders gave Pyers a hero’s sendoff as they’d done very well from racing tips he’d supplied them.
Billy Pyers returned to Australia but lost all the money he’d made in racing to a swindling accountant. He retired from the saddle in 1981, died in 2004 and was inducted into Racing Victoria’s Hall of Fame in 2010.
No Aussies are riding in this weekend’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, which will be fought out by Frenchmen, Irishmen, Germans, Brits and a Spaniard.
The big disappointment for aficionados is the non-appearance of City Of Troy, the current thoroughbred sensation who was bred in America and is trained in Ireland by Aidan O’Brien.
The three-year-old colt won the Epsom Derby and then beat older horses in the Coral Eclipse and the Juddmonte International. The Arc seemed the obvious next step, but the connections opted to rather save their star for the Breeders’ Cup meeting in California in November.
O’Brien does field two runners on Sunday, third favourite Los Angeles (6-1) and outsider Continuous (28-1), ridden by Ryan Moore and Christophe Soumillon respectively – arguably the two top jockeys in the world today.
O’Brien’s son Joseph sends out 11-1 shot Al Riffa. French father and son training duo Carlos and Yann Lerner will saddle ruling favourite Look De Vega (4-1), while nine-time Arc winner Andre Fabre has yet another bright chance with Sosie (5-1).
The Japanese challenger this year is Shinn Emperor (13-2), trained by Yoshito Yahagi and ridden by Ryusei Sakai.
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