Shes Perfect Team Loses Appeal in France
Zarigana remains the winner of the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches (French One Thousand Guineas, G1) after the appeal lodged by connections of Shes Perfect was unsuccessful.
The race-day stewards at Longchamp judged that Shes Perfect came off a straight line at Longchamp, carrying Ryan Moore on Exactly across Zarigana, interference they deemed to have cost the Aga Khan Studs’ filly more than the margin of her nose defeat.
A hearing lasting an hour took place May 20, with Charlie Fellowes saying he and Shes Perfect’s rider Kieran Shoemark had put forward some “legitimate arguments” to the three-person panel.
However, France Galop published the outcome Wednesday with no change to the stewards’ initial awarding of the classic to Zarigana.
Represented by leading lawyer Florence Gaudilliere, Fellowes, and Shoemark maintained their claim that nothing in the trajectory of Shes Perfect did anything to prevent Zarigana going past, that Exactly had taken Zarigana’s ground and that their filly was never headed at any point in the race.
In addition they pointed to what they argued was a precedent established in the case of the appeal over the 2019 Prix du Moulin (G1)—the only other group 1 in France to be subject to this procedure since the interference rules were brought much closer to those in Britain in 2017—in which the stewards elected not to demote Circus Maximus in favor of Romanised , despite what they claimed was “more serious interference.”
They also asked for the fact that Mickael Barzalona had not appealed against his two-day ban for Zarigana’s late deviation to her right to be taken into account, reasoning that he was solely responsible for not going past Shes Perfect, having dropped his whip.
Ryan Moore, who was present in the original inquiry and gave evidence by letter, said he believed he was about to go past Shes Perfect when she began to come across, and was forced to change his whip hand to avoid colliding with Shoemark’s mount, therefore shifting across Zarigana.
Moore said that he was carried off his line for a total of 150 meters and was forced to race on less favorable ground than if he had kept straight, adding that the original interference had cost him all chance of winning by the time Zarigana leaned in.
Zarigana’s owner, the Aga Khan Studs, was represented by another high-powered legal mind in Mathieu Offenstadt, and based their argument around the loss of balance and momentum caused by the domino effect of Shes Perfect coming across, and the fact that the drift had lasted for more than 100 meters.
Barzalona said his filly had been ready to accelerate before becoming unbalanced, while additional points raised were the opinion that Zarigana was in front the stride after the line, and that Fellowes had admitted that there was “minor interference” in an interview with “a British journalist,” presumed to be one he gave to Sky Sports Racing.
