Rough route to Arc summit for Chantilly aces

Elie Lellouche and Philippe Demercastel have risen far to become top trainers

As the British journalists drill their way through the hors- d'oeuvres, champagne and profiteroles inside the press marquee at Longchamp a week on Sunday they will discuss which will be the perfect result in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.

At one end of the scale will be victory for Lester Piggott on the supplemented Shergar, while at the other pole will be a success for either Aquarelliste or Hightori. Both are trained by Frenchmen, both of whom will be 50 next year but, most significantly, neither has taken the trouble to study the Queen's English.

The possibility of Elie Lellouche or Philippe Demercastel standing on the podium sous les platanes will, therefore, have bubbly trembling in the glasses as the similarly monolinguistic hacks bolt down their lunch. The problem for those swimming in the entente cordiale is that the animals from the host nation are in with a great chance.

Lellouche's Aquarelliste is the favourite in some books to follow Helissio in 1996 as an Arc winner for the Lamorlaye stable. Her yard has been quiet for much of the interim, a period which coincided with the removal of horses owned by Daniel Wildenstein.

Now, however, the capricious Parisian art dealer is back and the trainer blowing into his mouchoir is André Fabre. A total of 42 horses were removed from Lellouche's Chantilly neighbour in the spring and the jewel in the bran tub was Aquarelliste.

Three weeks after she dropped into Lellouche's keeping she won the Prix de Diane (French Oaks). Following her victory recently in the Prix Vermeille, Lellouche was persuaded to describe the unbeaten and powerful filly as the best of her sex he had ever trained.

Lellouche's training career started 20 years ago when he concluded a 10-year stint as a jockey, accumulating around 170 winners, many of them as a National Hunt pilot. The bouquets, though, were hard to come by. Greater moments have come since: Bigstone carried home the Sussex Stakes and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and there was also victory at Royal Ascot for Shake The Yoke in the Coronation Stakes.

Philippe Demercastel, another from the Chantilly commune, has suffered desertion himself. His career was founded largely on horses belonging to Jules Ouaki, the owner of the Tati stores in the French capital. They too have now gone, but Demercastel has been left with Chichicastenango, a dual Group One winner who has been taken out of the Arc after suffering a setback, and the estimable Hightori.

Demercastel is no nouveau riche, having spent time with Fabre and François Boutin as a stablelad. His was not a mercurial start in 1986 either and the trainer chose to move to Tunisia for two seasons to get the winners rolling.

Demercastel is a notably shy and discreet figure, even though he once threw a chair from the boxes at Longchamp into the stands below. It could have been a dangerous gesture on most racing days, but it came on the afternoon, earlier this season, when on-course Tote employees in the Bois de Boulogne had gone on strike. There was, horses apart, virtually nobody there.

Until Chichicastenango, Demercastel had endured an infuriating period without a Group One success. It stretched back to Magic Night in the 1991 Prix Vermeille, who acquired the sobriquet of Cinderella as she finished runner-up in the Prix de Diane, Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and Japan Cup.

It is a nickname which could also be stapled to Hightori, whom his trainer calls the "tender being". It is not a reputation which has stopped the colt being vigorously campaigned this year. He started off in Dubai, winning a small race before contesting the World Cup. Hightori has endured five runs and five defeats in Group One company, but none of the horses which have beaten him at the premium level will be in attendance at Longchamp.

The four-year-old's victory in the Prix Foy the weekend before last was perhaps the least convincing of the Arc trials, but then he had not had the most comfortable of preparations. Hightori had been scheduled to run in the Grosser Preis von Baden before that, a contest for which he was favourite to break his Group One duck.

However, on the eve of the race he contracted a tooth problem and had to be knocked out. He will have a similar effect on the British press if he scoots up the Longchamp straight ahead of the rest next weekend.