The Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the most prestigious turf race in the world, will be contested at Longchamp on Sunday, October 3! With fifteen horses entered to vie for a huge €5,000,000 purse and a Win and You’re In bid to the Breeders’ Cup Turf, the race will be a classy affair, and one of the greatest betting races of the year. This is the place to find out who to bet, and find out where to bet them!
The Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the most prestigious turf race in the world, will be contested at Longchamp on Sunday, October 3! With fifteen horses entered to vie for a huge €5,000,000 purse and a Win and You’re In a bid to the Breeders’ Cup Turf, the race will be a classy affair, and one of the greatest betting races of the year. This is the place to find out who to bet, and find out where to bet them!
The list of Arc winners is a roll of some of the best horses in history: from Ribot to Mill Reef, Alleged to Trempolino, Urban Sea to Montjeu, Sea the Stars to Treve to Enable. Which horse will add their name to that legacy?
Keep reading to find out who is most likely to win, and where you can bet the Arc online!
Just because you can’t get from Canada to France on Arc day doesn’t mean you can’t have a great time betting the race! You can get the best odds by betting the Arc online at one of the best online racebooks in Canada! Our experts will help you find the sites with the best odds, the smoothest user experiences, and the most trusted deposit and cash-out features.
Online racebooks, like William Hill, are also offering excellent bonuses for betting the Arc online. Learn more about the best Canadian racebooks, sign up on the ones whose bonuses fit your betting style, and then you can be confident that you are getting the best betting incentives all year long.
Handicapping the Arc begins with getting to know the contenders. Arc Contenders
This is the official field for the 2021 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe including numbers, post positions, trainers, and jockeys:
Keep in mind that at Longchamp, as with many European racetracks, saddlecloth numbers and post positions are not necessarily the same. However, with the track likely to come up soft, post position is less of a concern than it is when there is better ground. The race tends to play more fairly in terms of draw; the ability to handle softer going becomes the more interesting constraint.
Before delving into the horses, it is good to keep a few handicapping principles in mind. For one, the ground conditions matter. With wet ground at Longchamp already and more rain predicted for the days before the race, look for the horses who can handle ground rated soft and heavy.
The wet ground also means that post positions matter less. Inside posts do well on firmer days at Longchamp, but the more testing the ground gets, the less the post matters and the more stamina and affinity for the ground matter. So, do not shy away from a good horse who got an outside post draw.
Class and stamina, as always, matter as well. An Arc winner has usually won a Group 1 race before and has usually won a race going a mile and a half.
Aidan O’Brien always comes to the world’s best race meetings with good horses, and this is no different. He brings three to the Arc: Snowfall, Love, and Broome. Though she drew wide, Snowfall is not only the most appealing Aidan O’Brien horse but also the most appealing horse in the race.
Ballydoyle supplemented her to the Arc, and they had good reason. She tasted defeat over course and distance last month but had won three G1 races leading into that. The most impressive of the bunch was a 16-length romp in the Oaks: a race at a mile and a half over soft ground, which she’ll be doing this time as well. With the stamina, class, and wet-turf ability, she can tap into that brilliance again.
Charlie Appleby brings a live Godolphin pair to Paris: St. Leger (G1) winner Hurricane Lane and Derby (G1) winner Adayar. Both are proven at the mile and a quarter, and both are world-class three-year-olds. (Though the Arc is open to older horses, three-year-olds typically do very well.)
At a slightly longer price in the Appleby pair, take a longer look at Hurricane Lane. He has already won going a mile and a half at Longchamp, taking the Grand Prix de Paris (G1) over good-to-soft ground. He should make a strong run from midfield in the Arc.
Tarnawa has been vying for favourite status with Adayar, and that continues to be the case in world markets after the draw. She is proven over the course, with a win over heavy Longchamp ground in the Prix de l’Opera (G1) this time last year. Though she was defeated last time out, that was over a shorter trip, and she should appreciate stretching back out to this distance.
The other horse taking significant betting interest is Japanese shipper Chrono Genesis. She has proven she can travel, taking a close second to Mishriff in the Sheema Classic (G1) on the Dubai World Cup (G1) card earlier this year. However, she has yet to confront horses of this quality over softer going and no Japanese horse has ever captured the Arc.
In such a large field, there are almost always going to be interesting longshots, and there are a couple of horses who could make your Arc tickets really pay.
The most interesting price horse is Alenquer. Though he has been defeated in his last two, he has kept top-quality company like Mishriff and Hurricane Lane. He is definitely a distance-and-ground play: his highest-profile score so far came at Royal Ascot going a mile and a half over heavy ground, suggesting he can run another strong race under these conditions.
It is also worth considering Raabiyah. Though she was only fifth in the Arc last year, horses defeated in the previous year’s Arc have seen success in recent years. She ran on with good energy late to finish fifth behind Sottsass over rain-affected going in 2020, and she looked in strong form when winning over half a furlong longer than this at Deauville last out.
Here are your best bets for the 2021 Arc:
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