You never forget your first. I remember being there for his only defeat (in the Grand Criterium, now the Qatar Prix Luc-Lagardere) touched off by a stable companion, Grey Dawn, who was considered unbeatable at the time. They don’t make ‘em like Sea Bird anymore, certainly not after his dam was sold for £100 to a local butcher in Normandy. Her female forbears in five generations had produced two winners, one over hurdles and one under Pony Club rules. They come in all shapes and sizes so they say – but they don’t come from much odder origins than Sea Bird: with that background the horse of a lifetime, even of all time, might have been gelded…disqualifying him from all the top races he won.

My first Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the 43rd, in 1965 was to witness Sea Bird’s victory, the one which made him the highest-rated twelve-furlong performer of all time. Sea Bird sired, among many other top horses, the highest-rated middle-distance female of all time, Allez France who won the 1974 Arc. Oh and incidentally, Sea Bird won the Derby, the Irish Derby and the King George: I say incidentally but to the French they were incidental to his stunning Arc victory.

I wish the weather had been as good last Sunday for the 103rd Arc as it was back then but grey skies made for capture by the French Impressionist painters, and morbid rain that never emptied menacing clouds, meant that those who declared hoping for ground which would allow all participants something other than a traditional Longchamp mudlark, were forestalled.

I haven’t been to all the Arcs since ’65, by any means, but I would place this renewal won by the filly Blue Stocking near the top of my list – if not for purely professional reasons. Blue Stocking’s trainer Ralph Beckett is a near neighbour in Hampshire and when I asked him about the race earlier in the week, stood in Blue Stocking’s box where the four-year-old filly paid attention to her hay and not to us, the most he would proffer was: “It doesn’t appear as strong an Arc as last year.”

Twelve months ago Beckett was second with Juddmonte’s Westover. “I grew up watching Juddmonte’s Rainbow Quest and Dancing Brave (1985 and 1986) win the Arc. That’s how extraordinary this was for me today,” he ventured of Blue Stocking’s clear cut success, the record seventh in the race for the Juddmonte silks.

Never one to overstate his case Beckett attributed Blue Stocking’s success to “Her well-being. She’s a real professional which makes my job that much easier. For a moment I thought it was Westover all over again.”

Beckett all but had the Arc won last year before Ace Impact overhauled Westover. This year’s race went according to plan and there were no hard luck stories though Aidan O’Brien bemoaned the slow pace which he said had compromised the chances of third-placed Los Angeles.

“Blue Stocking kept finding for Rossa (Ryan)” said Beckett. “She just doesn’t give in easily. The ground (fast side) wasn’t in her favour in the Juddmonte International at York and you have to take your hat off to Goliath who beat her fair and square in the King George.”

I shall have more to say about geldings and Goliath in particular but without her Ascot conqueror in attendance Blue Stocking was not an unpredictable winner. After all she was returning to Longchamp, scene of her most recent victory in the Prix Vermeille (Gr1). The Vermeille, over the same course and distance last month, where Aventure also chased Blue Stocking home –the result replicated in the Arc. Déjà vu?

“We had the same plan as worked in the Vermeille,” said Beckett while youthful Rossa Ryan, surely a future champion jockey, expressed himself better than he has ever done, with the inspiration of the moment. “I was certainly confident beforehand, “he said. “But not confident enough to tell anyone.”

120,000 euros may seem a lot to enter a race but with Blue Stocking missing the cut off date for entries for the Arc by just two days, that’s the amount Juddmonte were prepared to stake. That’s how much it means to ‘the future of the breed’ for the home of Frankel and Kingman. Only the best will get the date with Blue Stocking.

Although Coolmore were for once forestalled, three representatives of one of their band of sires, Camelot, took part – including Blue Stocking. And later on in the card another of their new ‘hope of the side’ stallions, Justify (sire of City of Troy) was the sire of Ramatuelle winner of the Prix de la Foret, seventh Group One race of the day.

What about the Arc ‘if onlys’? Goliath and City of Troy were back in their stables; City of Troy gearing up for the Breeders’ Cup, Goliath a non-combatant due his gelding status.

I wish the weather had helped with the spectacle: drizzling rain from grey grumbling skies - a day for French Impressionist painters and- indeed Camille Pissarro beat Henri Matisse in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere (successor to Sea Bird’s Grand Criterium). I even saw a Frenchman wearing a beret – once national headgear now completely out of fashion. But perhaps inspired by the recent Paris Olympic Games the President of France Galop, Guillaume de Saint-Seine, caught the mood of the day when pronouncing the two-day meeting the “Olympics of racing”. He was quick to point out that ever since official world rankings were introduced in 2015 the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe has consistently been at the summit of world racing.

Japan just cannot seem to punch its weight. Prize money in the Orient outstrips most countries in the world but the three arrows they fired this time: their legendary jockey Yutaka Take on Al Riffa, first runner for Aidan O’Brien’s son Joseph; Japanese-bred but Irish-raced Continuous with French master Christophe Soumillon, and the chestnut colt Shin Emperor, a two million euros Sales purchase, who back in Japan has won most of that back in prize money, could not get involved. That’s thirty-two goes for the racing mad nation and inscrutable as they are the massed ranks of Japanese fans and media representatives never got near to raising a cheer. Maybe they should switch to the Epsom Derby which may be easier – blasphemy of course for British racing folk. There were plenty of them to roar home Blue Stocking.

Which brings me to the point of whether this was this year’s ‘greatest race’. I would have a reservation: will somebody tell me who said: “Without standards of comparison we imagine ourselves limitless”? Some clever dick might computerize how Sea Bird would have demolished this latest renewal but I’d be at least as interested in how he would have played against the geldings who weren’t allowed to run. The attendance of Goliath who easily beat Blue Stocking in the King George & Queen Elizabeth Stakes; Calandagan within a length of City of Troy in his first Group One at York finishing ahead of Blue Stocking; and Rebel’s Romance seven Group Ones and counting in this season’s championship races, would have been more than justified on ratings and on ability. The aforementioned trio are rated joint third and fifth best racehorses in the world in the Longines rankings behind Laurel River in the USA and City of Troy.

It sounds so obvious: the more exclusions we make from competition the likelier we are to exalt the participants above their station; reputations erected without the scaffolding…no authentic standards of comparison. At his best the gelding Cirrus des Aigles gave dual Arc winner Treve 5lb and beat her in Paris. And he stretched Frankel, at level weights, at Ascot. Frankel then retired. Cirrus des Aigles ran another twenty-two times. He was the highest-rated horse that Frankel vanquished. He (never ‘it’) ran in twenty-seven Group One races, was unbeatable on heavy ground - except by Frankel.

No crowning moment then for Cirrus des Aigles in the Arc because he was gelded before he first ran. So was Goliath, so was Calandagan, so was Rebel’s Romance: how about an ‘Arc’ for geldings?

The race was initiated in 1920, given an evocative name with more élan than perhaps that of the Derby decided by the ‘toss of a coin’. The ‘Arc’ title was pinched straight from a claiming race though there was a toss-up of sorts with the alternative ‘Prix de la Victoire’ losing out. Internationally there are many more Derbies than Arcs, arguably devaluing the former. Would a gelding’s appearance devalue or undermine the Arc, all that history and tradition? Had Cirrus des Aigles won the Arc in 2012, the year he bowed to Frankel, would that have compromised Frankel’s reputation? Hardly. Instead the race went to Solemia an ordinary mare by the highest standards - of comparison.

At the time of the Arc’s inception it would never have entered authority’s thinking that geldings should ‘taint’ championship races. Horrors, one finished runner-up in the 1894 Derby and they were promptly elbowed out of the Classics. So the great geldings have had to make do with lesser feats - outside Group One. Annoyingly, for the purblind pedigree purists, geldings have been ‘too successful’ against their contemporaries who were allowed to retain their masculinity (and femininity). So the question of their participation at the highest level is being bandied around again – as if racing hadn’t enough ‘issues’ tearing the game apart.

Though Sea Bird came perhaps too soon – occurring in my more impressionable days – leaving me to compare everything by his standards, in 2015 I also witnessed a result which still defies description. Aidan O’Brien saddled the first three home – none of them in the first four in the betting, all by Galileo. The interview room, at Chantilly (Longchamp was being redeveloped) afterwards was a little short of air as everyone – winners and journos gasped at what they had just seen. It wasn’t that O’Brien was lost for superlatives but the realization of witnesses that we shall never see the like again.

However, suffice to say that trio Found, Highland Reel and Order of St George have hardly taken one’s breath away at stud. Bluestocking comes from a Juddmonte family replete with winners. Future offspring will surely wing their way to the most upwardly mobile trainer in the British ranks, and Ralph Beckett will have lots more interviews to give. Maybe I too had better spend more time in my neighbour’s stables.