Harness: Face Time Bourbon best in Grand Prix d'Amerique

Face Time Bourbon followed cover, found racing room to the inside in the lane, and rallied by to capture today's Grand Prix d'Amerique at Vincennes Racecourse in Paris.

Driven by Björn Goop, Face Time Bourbon had an excellent start and could have gone to the front, but elected to stay two-wide and picked up the cover of Davidson du Pont (Franck Ouvrie). They remained two-wide and prominent throughout as Billie de Montfort (Gabriele Gelormini) led first, then gave way to Excellent (Alexandre Abrivard).

Excellent continued to show the way for a while with Propulsion (Orjan Kihlstrom) and Looking Superb (David Thomain) advancing three-wide. Disaster then struck for Excellent as he made a break, and that allowed Looking Superb to clear, with Propulsion settling into the pocket. They would both then be overtaken by a charging Vivid Wise AS (Yoann Lebourgeois), who made wide move to grab the front.

Vivid Wise AS led around the last turn, but Davidson du Pont began to challenge, then forged his way by in upper stretch. Face Time Bourbon and Goop were just waiting for a chance to strike, though, and he found room to the inside of Davidson du Pont as Vivid Wise AS faded and broke. Once he had the room, Face Time Bourbon had plenty of trot, and he would charge past to score by about a length and a half.

Davidson du Pont had to settle for second, with defending race winner Belina Josselyn (Jean-Michel Bazire) third. Fourth went to Chica de Joudes (Alain Laurent) and Vitruvio (Alessandro Gocciadoro) was fifth. The final time was 1'11"50, just off the Prix d'Amerique record of 1'11"20 set in both 2017 and 2018.

A 5-year-old son of Ready Cash, Face Time Bourbon is trained by Sébastien Guarato for owner Scuderia Bivans SRL. This was Guarato's third Prix d'Amerique victory and Goop's second. Face Time Bourbon has now won 19 times from 22 career starts and earned 1,473,550 Euros.