Vega has winning Look in Prix du Jockey Club

Look De Vega maintained his flawless record to land the Qatar Prix du Jockey Club for Carlos and Yann Lerner.

One of the market leaders along with Aidan O’Brien’s Diego Velazquez, the colt came into the race with two comfortable prior victories under his belt.

He broke well from the stalls and settled in behind the front runners under Ronan Thomas, keeping his powder dry until the home straight when others began to falter.

Then he picked up the lead, surging clear in the final two furlongs to cross the line comfortably ahead of First Look.

Sosie took third with the Clive Cox-trained Ghostwriter in fourth, while David Menuisier’s Sunway and Diego Velazquez finished down the field.

“The only thing we were a little bit worried about is that he came out of stall number three and everything had to go right at that moment,” said Yann Lerner.

“But when I saw him get into that good position, I have never watched a race as relaxed as I did this one.

“When we won at Fontainebleau (in November) we immediately thought about this race, he had a more or less perfect winter until February, where we had a little bit of a setback, that was the only dark point in the past.

“What is really incredible is his mental state, we hadn’t worked him a lot since his first seasonal reappearance.

“Between the two races he didn’t do much, we took him to the Chantilly track because it was very important to us that he could see the track.”

Look De Vega was cut from 33-1 to 8-1 with Coral for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and Lerner added of the prospect of running there: “At the moment we don’t have any plans whatsoever, this was the big plan and he confirmed today what we thought of him.

“We will go home and recover and see how he is after this race, however he does have an entry in the Arc and I think he can stay the mile and a half, absolutely no doubt.

“The Arc can be a very tricky race and he can adapt to those conditions, he is a horse that ticks all the right boxes because he has shown today what he can do in the future.”

Thomas, for whom the success was a first at Group One level in France, said: “Obviously I am very, very happy, but more than anything I was so confident in this horse because I have been working with him since the end of last year and I was really impressed.

“He gave me a really good feeling, he won as we thought he would first time out and since then he’s made giant steps.

“Of course I respected my opposition today but I was always very confident.”