Brilliant French filly leaves her rivals trailing in Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe

THERE was gratitude from the winning trainer and sympathy from countless thousands but none of it will have consoled Frankie Dettori last night.

Treve

THERE was gratitude from the winning trainer and sympathy from countless thousands but none of it will have consoled Frankie Dettori last night.

Europe's greatest race turned out just as he had dreamt it would but Dettori was watching helplessly from afar.

Treve was a spectacular winner of the Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe for the Qatari owner who had rescued Dettori's toiling comeback with a rich retainer. This landmark victory for Sheikh Joaan al-Thani, however, was achieved without his chosen jockey.

Injuries come no more untimely than Dettori's tumble at Nottingham last Wednesday. Broken bones in his ankle and foot were reset in an operation on Friday and the dejection of the Italian, who will not ride again until the new year, can only be imagined as his deputy, Thierry Jarnet, was a euphoric passenger on a quite brilliant filly.

Jarnet barely had to move as Treve showed dazzling acceleration to leave her rivals floundering in the cloying Longchamp going. As the jockey is 46 and the trainer, Criquette Head-Maarek, 65, this was a triumph for established French figures. For Britain it was a wipe-out, with Al Kazeem sixth and Joshua Tree well beaten.

Dettori was said by his manager, Peter Burrell, to be retreating into devastated silence even before this stunning recital of his convictions. Treve won by five lengths from the Japanese-based favourite, Orfevre, despite sweating up badly beforehand and despite Jarnet achieving none of the cover she was said to require.

Head-Maarek last saddled an Arc winner 34 years ago yet she reacted to this one with the joie de vivre of a teenager. "I was going to retire," she announced. "But I'm not now. The way she won is incredible. I thought she had six gears but she showed she has seven."

She was eager to praise the part played by Dettori, who finessed Treve to victory in the Prix Vermeille three weeks ago. "I told him to think of the Arc, no whip, and he did it exactly as I wished," she said. "I want to say thank you to him."

Dettori may be grateful for the thought but his mind will have been in turmoil. His retainer with the Sheikh is secure, and has freed him from the rigours of a freelance existence, but he will end this British season with only 16 winners and 2014 will require him to start yet another comeback with the haunting memories of what might have been.

Treve can be his motivation, if he thinks positively. Head-Maarek said her unbeaten filly is likely to stay in training as a four-year-old and her principal target will be to become the first horse since Alleged, in 1978, to win it twice.

Her joy was intensified by the personal nature of the triumph. Not only did the Head family breed Treve, on their stud near Deauville, but her success has rescued the stable from a slump. The trainer, who has fought cancer, lost the patronage of the Wertheimer family recently and, at 65, her remark about retirement was not entirely in jest.

"She's like a sister to me," Head-Maarek said of Treve, "a part of the family." She had not always seemed destined for such lofty heights, though, failing to meet a reserve of euros 22,000 (pounds 18,600) at the Deauville yearling sales in 2011 and then proving so backward that she was not initially entered for the Arc.

The supplementary fee of euros 100,000 ($143,989.37) was loose change to Sheikh Joaan even before he landed the prize of more than 20 times that amount. This is the biggest win of his infant ownership career and another giant step towards domination of global racing by the al-Thani family.

In one sense it was appropriate, as the Arc meeting is sponsored by Qatar, yet for much of yesterday this corner of Paris was being turned into a clamorous suburb of Tokyo. The two cities are 6,000 miles apart but the number of supporters who had made the journey was rather more than that. At 9.30am hundreds were waiting for the gates to open.

Moving from one queue, they soon formed others, of unfeasible length, at the Tote windows, brandishing their betting slips as souvenirs to go with the flags, painted faces and inexhaustible photography.

Longchamp was well prepared, providing Japanese guides, translators, betting staff and even an excitable announcer. With metronomic inevitability, Orfevre was backed into an absurdly short price on the Paris Mutuel, which also showed Kizuna as second favourite.

Four times previously, Japan had come to the Arc with genuine prospects and missed out only narrowly. Last year, Orfevre looked to have the race won until wavering close home.

Confidence in a change of luck reached fever pitch as Christophe Soumillon mounted him in the perennially cramped chaos of the Longchamp parade ring. Nearby, his former boss, the multiple French champion trainer Andre Fabre, wore a finely cut suit and an expression of chiselled disapproval as he marshalled jockeys for his five runners.

Roger Charlton, trainer of Al Kazeem, revealed he had spoken to Lester Piggott yesterday about Arc tactics and been instructed that patience was a virtue. James Doyle applied it, while the only other British runner, rank outsider Joshua Tree, led a stately gallop.

Neither was sighted at the business end but the same applied to every other horse in a startlingly one-sided contest. Orfevre was second again and Soumillon shook his head in surrender. Back in Newmarket, Dettori's reaction may have been more graphic.

The Times