20 May 2023
Photo scoopdyga.com
Saturday, May 20, 2023, Auteuil Racecourse (Paris). – The first Group race of the Paris Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris weekend, the €135,000 Sagan 3yo Fillies Hurdle Race (Gr3), pits the best 3-year-old fillies over the Auteuil hurdles. The favourite of this 2023 edition, until then undefeated in two outings, Funny Berry (Bathyrhon) missed the landing of the third hurdle and could not avoid falling. Fragments of Time (Born to Sea) led the race ahead of Terra Bella (Seabhac) and Kargese (Jeu St Eloi), not always fluent in her jumps, up to the back straight, when these two found themselves alone in the lead to take the final turn.
Terra Bella was then leading with the AQPS Kargese on her side, and she jumped the last two hurdles ahead of her rival. Still, in the run-in, the representative of the pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie the Thierry Cypres & Sons stables and José Louis da Silva managed to find the necessary energy to overtake Terra Bella and win by two lengths while more than six lengths behind the second, the AQPS Kalaboumboum Dab (Battle of Marengo) took third place.
Kargese's dam Rive Gauche (Shaanmer) only ran over the flat, and she won at Royan. She ended her career with 3rd place at Zonza in Corsica. Kargese is her fourth foal. She has given two other fillies whose names also refer to the Mediterranean island since her winning daughter at Durtal is called Figatelle (Yeats), a Corsican sausage, and the one who was sold for €23,000 at the Arqana Lumet show to David Cottin is known as Immortelle (Boris de Deauville), an endemic flower in Corsica. She has since won at Toulouse over hurdles and placed at Compiègne.
The second dam Alconea (Brezzo), is also mentioned in the good Vroum Vroum Mag (Voix du Nord) and Saint Are (Network)'s pedigrees.