Onesto set to add to strong French challenge for Irish Champion Stakes

Vadeni is favourite for next week’s Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes but French interest in the €1 million highlight will include another Group One star in Onesto.

Winner of last month’s Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamp, Onesto was added to the Irish Champion Stakes entry at a cost of €20,000 shortly afterwards.

The son of Frankel was an unlucky fifth to Vadeni in the Prix du Jockey Club in June and is set to renew rivalry with the Aga Khan-owned star at Leopardstown.

Onesto will be a first runner in Ireland for trainer Fabrice Chappet who recently reported: “He has won over a mile and a half but he showed in the Prix Du Jockey Club that he has enough speed to be going against the best horses over a mile and a quarter.

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“He stays, but not only that, he has a great turn of foot and I’m sure he’s as good over a mile and quarter as he is over a mile and a half.”

Onesto is a general 8-1 shot for the Champion Stakes, which suffered a blow on Sunday when it was confirmed the world’s top-rated horse, Baaeed, is skipping the most valuable contest of Longines Irish Champions Weekend.

His absence does, however, open up the race to a number of other leading international runners, with the English pair Mishriff and Bay Bridge still in the mix to line up.

Vadeni beat both of those older horses when landing the Eclipse at Sandown and is a general 6-4 favourite to successfully maintain Gallic links to the Champion Stakes.

The Lester Piggott-ridden Malacate won the very first renewal of the race in 1976. The stalwart mare Triptych was successful at the old Phoenix Park in 1987, while Suave Dancer emerged on top back at Leopardstown in 1991.

Vadeni’s team of trainer Jean Claude Rouget and jockey Christophe Soumillon landed a memorable victory from a star-studded field in 2016 with Almanzor.

The ninth Irish Champions Weekend will be the first open to the public without restrictions since 2019.

Irish flat racing’s €3.9 million showpiece event was held behind closed doors in 2020 due to the pandemic and limited to 4,000 patrons at both Leopardstown and the Curragh a year ago.

The Curragh’s chief executive and Champions Weekend committee member Brian Kavanagh believes an element of consolidation will underpin the event this time.

“This year, the first year back post-Covid, I think everyone wants to get on with the meeting and get it run. It will be a good time then to look at different ideas and concepts,” he said on Monday

“We’ve all been in an unusual situation with Covid and two years abnormal racing, and from a Curragh point of view we had a construction period in advance of it,” Kavanagh pointed out.

The ex-chief executive of Horse Racing Ireland said mooted ideas of switching the two dates so the weekend might build to the programme’s most valuable contest, the Champion Stakes, haven’t been considered.

“The original idea of the weekend, and this remains true, is that you put together two different venues so people can sample racing across a range of distances.

“It’s not just about a single Group One. All those races have different attractions or interests. We would regard it as a weekend of racing rather than two specific days of racing.

“The Champion Stakes has always been well positioned in terms of its slot in the European calendar and that’s proven the same for the two-year-old races. Races like the Matron and the Flying Five, which was upgraded, have all become destination races in their own right,” he said.