Coolmore Stud by Alan Conway

Author:Alan Conway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mercier Press

Montjeu

He came, he dazzled and in the blink of an eye he was gone. For three magical seasons from 1998 to 2000, there was no horse in the world that stirred the emotions quite like Montjeu. Even saying his name now, sixteen years after his retirement and four years after his premature death in 2012, conjures up many wonderful memories and reminds us why the sport of horse racing is the passion we have chosen. While many horses hint at potential greatness, there can be no doubt that Montjeu had it. Be it his gorgeous turn of foot that he would unleash at the deep end of his races, or his ability, no matter what the speed of the race was, to simply cruise along as if he were out for a stroll on the streets of Paris on a cool autumn day, he was undoubtedly a champion. He did what he wanted, when he wanted to do it. And when he decided that the viewing public was worthy of seeing the fullness of his talents, Montjeu was a remarkable sight. One could argue that there hasn’t been a middle-distance horse since the great Nijinsky to have the talent, confidence and swagger of Montjeu.

Unlike the vast majority of their horses, Montjeu wasn’t born into the Coolmore family. Although he was sired by Sadler’s Wells, Montjeu was out of the Prix de Lutèce winner Floripedes. The colt was bred in Ireland by Sir James Goldsmith, who named him after his château outside Autun in France. Unfortunately Goldsmith died in 1997, before the colt began racing, and his ownership was transferred to a holding company owned by Laure Boulay de la Meurthe, mother of two of Goldsmith’s children. The colt was sent into training with John E. Hammond at Chantilly. Hammond was, by 1998, established as one of the finest trainers in Europe.

Having spent time learning at the bootstraps of the brilliant French trainer André Fabre, Hammond struck out on his own in 1988. He trained his first top-class racehorse soon after, when he guided the brilliant Suave Dancer to glory in the 1991 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. In a fantastic racing career, the colt also won the Prix Greffulhe, the Prix du Jockey Club and the Irish Champion Stakes, and finished second in the Irish Derby and the Prix Lupin. Hammond was the trainer of other top-class performers such as Dear Doctor (winner of the Arlington Million), Dolphin Street (Prix de la Forêt), Sought Out (Prix du Cadran), Cherokee Rose, who won both the Haydock Sprint Cup and the Prix Maurice de Gheest, and Nuclear Debate. One can only imagine what Hammond thought when Montjeu stepped off the box at his Chemin des Aigles stables in Chantilly in 1998.

For a horse of his size and scope, not a lot was expected of his two-year-old campaign. Under the watchful gaze of Hammond and his experienced staff, Montjeu began to show speckles of talent on the gallops, along with a lot of highly charged energy, which is known as ‘temperament’ in the horse-racing world.

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