The scene at Longchamp on Saturday

The action at Longchamp gets under way at 12.40pmCredit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)

Our French correspondent Scott Burton was out on the track this morning. Here’s what he saw. . .

The sun is shining and the morning dew is beginning to dry off the top of the track at Longchamp, but conditions will certainly be testing for all the runners in the Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. 

Walking up the straight towards the home turn there is plenty of fresh, unmarked ground, with the virgin strip plus the cutaway rail providing 15 metres of turf where the finishes to five of today’s six thoroughbred Group races will be fought out.

But turn uphill into the false straight and the true nature of how the track has stood up to the rain and yesterday’s racing revealed itself. 

Here the new ground is only seven metres wide and, unless someone wants to really scrape the paint, it might be two or three horse-widths at the most. Outside of that is the line that hosted all nine of Saturday’s races, and the wear and tear is obvious. 

Put simply, the Arc field will be running downhill from about seven furlongs and those parked wide off that fresh strip will be on ground which is much more worn. 

Very wide the ground is largely untouched and it’s not inconceivable that one of the jockeys will make a bold bid to sweep around the field as Orfevre did from a wide draw in 2012, while Thierry Jarnet executed a similar move on his way to victory aboard Treve in 2013. 

Because the runners were fanning out in the straight on Saturday there is less of a marked difference between the raced-on ground and the inside strip. 

But if you’ve used up gas on the uphill section in the first half of the race, or else become unbalanced coming down the descent into the false straight, your race might already be run by that point.