Charyn stands out in Prix du Moulin

The 4-year-old colt Charyn couldn’t win a race last year. He has been all but unbeatable during 2024.

Charyn got his season started early by European standards, making his first start this year on March 23. He won that day and has only improved in four races since. And after going winless in seven 2023 outings, Charyn has four victories and a good second from five starts during his 4-year-old campaign.

His defeat came in the J.T. Lockinge Stakes, the first important race of the European flat season for milers, but that second-place finish led to Charyn’s first Group 1 success, in the Queen Anne at Royal Ascot, and Charyn came back seven weeks later and ran even better in a second Group 1 triumph, capturing the Group 1 Jacques Le Marois at Deauville by three lengths.

Charyn’s official ratings have risen dramatically, and he comes to the Group 1 Prix du Moulin de Longchamp on Sunday in Paris considered the best miler in Europe.

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Some would argue that Charyn has gotten good at the right time, a solid but unspectacular colt during a down year in the division. In any case, he was trading in England, where he trains with Roger Varian, at just over even money for the Moulin, which lured a field of seven. Charyn’s last three races have come down straight courses, but the bend he runs around Sunday isn’t nearly so severe the turn at Sandown Park, where Charyn won at the Group 2 level in his start before the Lockinge. And while Charyn has gotten good or good-to-firm ground his last three races, and the Longchamp course on Friday was rated soft, he traveled to France as a 2-year-old and won the Criterium de Maisons-Laffitte on a soft course.

Charyn gives four pounds to the three 3-year-olds in the Moulin – Notable Speech, Henry Longfellow, and Ramadan. Notable Speech, a Charlie Appleby-trained Godolphin homebred, brings the highest-level form among that trio. Notable Speech moved from three all-weather races to begin his career into the 2000 Guineas, which he won very well, beating the good colt Rosallion by 1 1/2 lengths. Notable Speech flopped in the St. James’s Palace at Royal Ascot but rebounded last month at Goodwood, winning his first start against older rivals, the Group 1 Sussex Stakes.

The Sussex runner-up, Maljoom, who gave eight pounds to Notable Speech, is a good horse, but he is no Charyn.

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