The French Classic Races are a series of Group One Thoroughbred horse races run annually on the flat. The races were instituted in the nineteenth century, taking the British Classic Races as a model.
In the original scheme, one race, the Poule d'Essai, served as the equivalent to the first two British classics, but was later divided into separate races for colts and fillies. The Grand Prix de Paris, for many years the most important and valuable of the French classics, had no British equivalent.
| French Classic | Founded | British equivalent |
| Prix du Jockey Club | 1836 | Epsom Derby |
| Poule d'Essai | 1840 | 1000 Guineas & 2000 Guineas |
| Prix de Diane | 1843 | Epsom Oaks |
| Prix Royal-Oak | 1861 | St. Leger Stakes |
| Grand Prix de Paris | 1863 | none |
| Poule d'Essai des Poulains | 1883 | 2000 Guineas |
| Poule d'Essai des Pouliches | 1883 | 1000 Guineas |
The Prix Royal-Oak was opened to older horses in 1979, making it no longer a direct parallel to the St. Leger, which remains open only to three-year-olds. It distanced itself further from the St. Leger parallel in 1986, when it opened to geldings, becoming the only classic race in either France or Great Britain in which geldings are allowed to run. (Note that in several other major racing regions, notably North America and Australia, geldings are allowed to run in any race open to intact males if they are otherwise qualified to enter.)
Famous quotes containing the words french, classic and/or races:
“Just as the French of the nineteenth century invested their surplus capital in a railway-system in the belief that they would make money by it in this life, in the thirteenth they trusted their money to the Queen of Heaven because of their belief in her power to repay it with interest in the life to come.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Shatter the icons of slavery and fear.
Replace
the leer
of the minstrel’s burnt-cork face
with a proud, serene
and classic bronze of Benin.”
—Dudley Randall (b. 1914)
“Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy—common clay, if you like—eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can’t imagine dead. And then there are the others—the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes.”
—Jean Anouilh (1910–1987)