{"id":111944,"date":"2025-09-03T16:53:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/111944\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T16:53:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:53:11","slug":"facteur-cheval-on-course-for-third-champions-day-appearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/111944\/","title":{"rendered":"Facteur Cheval on course for third Champions Day appearance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The consistent six-year-old has been a regular visitor to Britain throughout his career and has twice fallen short in Ascot\u2019s showpiece Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, finishing second to compatriot Big Rock in 2023 before chasing home Roger Varian\u2019s Charyn 12 months ago.<\/p>\n<p>Last seen in the Prince of Wales\u2019s Stakes at Royal Ascot, he will now try to get his head in front for the first time on British soil, with connections seeing his freshness as a positive ahead of the October 18 contest.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2.73214710.jpg\" alt=\"Trainer Jerome Reynier (left) with Facteur Cheval\" data-title=\"Qatar Goodwood Festival 2023 \u2013 Day Two \u2013 Goodwood Racecourse\" data-copyright-holder=\"PA Archive\" data-copyright-notice=\"PA Archive\/PA Images\" data-credit=\"Andrew Matthews\" data-usage-terms=\"Use subject to restrictions. Editorial use only, no commercial use without prior consent from rights holder.\"  \/>Trainer Jerome Reynier (left) with Facteur Cheval (Andrew Matthews\/PA)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to wait for the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes again and he\u2019s placed in it a few times and always runs well in it, so we\u2019re looking forward to it,\u201d said Barry Irwin, CEO of Team Valor International, who own the horse in partnership with Gary Barber.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJerome had to send him off for a month R and R after his run at Royal Ascot as he lost some weight and didn\u2019t look as well as he should. He\u2019s got him back and he looks fine but he\u2019s been unable to do enough with him to race in the Prix du Moulin this weekend, so Ascot is the plan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hope he can run well again at Ascot, he likes the course and it will all depend how the ground comes up. He does want some cut in the ground and if it\u2019s a bog he can handle that too and as long as it\u2019s not really firm I think he can do it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe does run well fresh and has shown that before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/21e6878a-e6b3-4592-bb86-8f688dc3bdeb.jpg\" alt=\"Facteur Cheval at Meydan\"  \/>Facteur Cheval at Meydan (PA)<\/p>\n<p>Connections are targeting a second win the Dubai Turf next year, willing to forego other valuable events in the Middle East early in 2026 to focus solely on peaking at Meydan on Dubai World Cup night, as they did in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNext year we\u2019re going to pinpoint the Dubai Turf again and I think we\u2019ll take him over and run him in that race cold turkey,\u201d continued Irwin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll have Jerome do what he did when we went there and won the first time and give him a little afternoon trial at the local racecourse and then show up for the race. That\u2019s a tried and tested plan which a lot of Europeans take and has worked well for this horse before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll things considered, he\u2019s still fairly lightly raced and we haven\u2019t hammered him. The biggest campaign he had was earlier this year in the Middle East where we got a little ambitious and ran him on the dirt a few times and I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll be doing that next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The consistent six-year-old has been a regular visitor to Britain throughout his career and has twice fallen short&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-111944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}