James Doyle will ride Henri-Alex Pantall's Fast Tracker in the French Derby after Wathnan Racing acquired the colt to bolster their expanding stable.
His first time at the racetrack was not the best, as he struggled to find his way around the stalls and finished last out of six. He soon went back to the same track to give it another shot.
On his second try, he performed better, coming in third in the Prix de Fuveau after losing by only half a length, and then making a third trip to the same course to win the Prix du Vieux Bourg.
Of those early runs, Pantall said: “He is a horse that has a lot of character, one of the issues was him going into the stalls and coming out of them. He was not really interested in working and you can see that in his first race, the second race was nearly OK and he came out of the stalls, then the third time it was all OK. He has made a lot of progress since he left Cagnes-Sur-Mer, he has taken things really well mentally and physically.”
After turning the bend, the colt went on to the Prix Gris Perle in Saint-Cloud, which he won by a margin of six and a half lengths. Subsequently, he advanced to the Listed level and won the Prix de Suresnes, attracting the interest of Wathnan Racing, the owners from Qatar.
Since Wathnan bought the horse from his breeder, Doyle, their hired jockey, will ride him at Chantilly. Sky Sports Racing will broadcast all of the action live.
“He changed colours 10 days ago, he was owned by his breeder who had a lot of propositions after Saint-Cloud and then after Chantilly, Wathnan Racing came in so he changed colours not very long ago,” Pantall said. “As we know, James Doyle is retained by Wathnan Racing so it was normal that he would take the ride but I wanted to point out that Tony Piccone, who used to ride him, did a great job on him and was incredibly patient and really schooled the horse well in his races. James came in this morning and it went really well, the horse didn’t work on grass since we don’t have that opportunity and anyway, I didn’t want to give him a racecourse gallop because he only ran in Chantilly three weeks ago. James rode him and he said it really went well, the horse is in good nick, he finished well on the straight and James was quite enthusiastic.”