Nashwa could find distance, competition more favorable in French Oaks

Nashwa was not quite good enough for the Oaks at Epsom on June 3 but might well be good enough for the Oaks at Chantilly on Sunday.

A fine third in England going 1 1/2 miles last out, Nashwa cuts back to 1 5/16 miles for the Group 1 Prix de Diane, France’s Oaks.

John Gosden, who co-trains Nashwa with his son Thady, won this race in 2015 with Star of Seville while jockey Hollie Doyle seeks her first victory in the French classic. In the June 3 Oaks, where she was second favorite, Nashwa was no match for Tuesday, who won the Oaks by the narrowest of margins, and her stablemate Emily Upjohn, but she beat the eight others in the race and could benefit from a moderate cutback in distance Sunday having gone slightly flat late in her last race. Nashwa sharply won her two previous starts in 2022, including a listed stakes at Newbury over 1 1/4 miles, which could prove the filly’s best trip at this stage of her career.

:: Get ready for Saratoga and Del Mar with a Quarterly subscription to DRF Past Performances

Awaiting her at Chantilly are 17 opponents, including the Juddmonte homebred Agave, who won her first three starts before a creditable second-place finish against males in the Prix Greffulhe on May 8. Agave got a three-pound sex allowance in that 1 5/16-mile clash at Saint-Cloud but was beaten into second by Onesto, who returned to finish fifth of 14 in the Prix du Jockey-Club, the French Derby. Agave is trained by Andre Fabre, who scored his first of four Prix de Diane wins in 1985.

The Chantilly course as of Friday was rated good-to-soft and perhaps doesn’t have quite enough give for another Fabre filly, Zellie. Also in the field is Yukata, a Galileo filly bred by Peter Brant’s White Birch Farms and co-owned by Brant and the Coolmore connections. Trained by Jean-Claude Rouget, Yukata finished a mildly troubled third in her Prix de Diane prep, the Prix Finlande on May 19, and could easily show meaningful improvement Sunday.

Post time for the Prix de Diane is 10 a.m. Eastern. You can catch all the action at DRFBets.com.