The 105th Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the world’s most prestigious test of a thoroughbred, crowned a new star as three-year-old colt Daryz stormed past favourite Minnie Hauk to silence sceptics of his generation. Trained by Francis-Henri Graffard, who celebrated his first Arc and eighth Group One of the season, Daryz’s victory also marked the Aga Khan Studs’ fifth triumph in the iconic race — a fitting crescendo to Paris Longchamp’s grand spectacle.

So many facts cascaded from the 105th Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, first run in 1920, arguably the world’s greatest test of a thoroughbred (and you wouldn’t have to argue too fiercely), that choosing the one most notable is virtually impossible. Ribot, Sea-Bird and Sea the Stars, sire of the winner of the latest edition, Daryz, would have leading claims.

The classic generation have been much maligned but three-year-old colt Daryz’s victory, coming from his late charge to overtake the favourite and contemporary, exceptional filly Minnie Hauk provided the sceptics misguided they were well clear of the rest.

This Arc, as ever, was a great spectacle lifting the enormous crowd – there seemed to be as many Japanese supporting their three runners, as native Frenchman and international visitors, equine and human, and was of course the high point of a weekend of top class racing.

But the facts: that the victory of Daryz climaxing (though he may yet go on to achieve further greatness) a career that started just six months ago; trained by Francis-Henri Graffard for whom this was his first Arc success (he fielded three of the sixteen runners) but an eighth Group One of the season leaving him one behind the all-time record of the master trainer Andre Fabre; and the fifth time the green with red epaulette silks of the Aga Khan Studs had won the pinnacle of middle distance racing – then you have some idea of the momentous happenings at Paris Longchamp racecourse on the first Sunday in October.

There was an even more dramatic story surrounding the victory of the Australian mare Asfoora in the five-furlong Prix de l’Abbaye (Group One). She became the first to do the Group One double of the UK’s premier five-furlong sprint, the Nunthorpe, and the Abbaye. She won in a photo but it was an even closer run thing that Asfoora even got to race. Her Australian trainer had bought a horse at the preceding day’s Arqana Sales and taken it back to lodge alongside Asfoora at British trainer Amy Murphy’s Chantilly stables, an hour outside Paris.

The horsebox delivered Asfoora to Longchamp but with the new horse’s passport! A driver was given the green light to break all records speeding across car-choked Paris – and he must have gone through red lights to beat the deadline for production of the correct documents in the weighing room, with minutes to spare!

Asfoora’s Aussie trainer Henry Dwyer, by no means leader of the pack in his native Australia though an engaging character, has done plenty of fast travelling himself – six times crossing from his home country to supervise Asfoora’s career but the booster of successive victories blew away any cobwebs of fatigue – just as Asfoora has been blowing away opposition.

Sunday’s pair of two-year-old Group Ones were a triumph for Aidan O’Brien and the Coolmore team. Their Arc favourite Minnie Hauk might have been denied by Daryz but golden future’s for Diamond Necklace after her mile Prix Marcel Boussac victory and for Puerto Rico following the colts’ equally impressive success in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere over seven furlongs suggests that the most formidable racing operation, arguably in the world, has the future in its sights.

It is impossible to call France’s many times champion jockey Christophe Soumillon, the ‘king’ of Longchamp, a ‘substitute’ – there is no substitute for class which he oozes, but he would have been on other than the triumphant two-year-olds and the gallant Minnie Hauk but for the injury to Coolmore’s number one, Ryan Moore.

This was the tenth Lagardere for Aidan O’Brien, and sixth Boussac and he has won both on the same card before. Puerto Rico is a son of the recently deceased and much lamented Wootton Bassett, himself sire of last year’s winner Camille Pissarro – also a Coolmore. Puerto Rico’s career is remarkable in that it took him six goes to break his maiden! Next stop the USA.

Puerto Rico was the 21st victory at top level for Aidan O’Brien this year and followed the 20th – Diamond Necklace. He is a phenomenon.

The cream really does rise to the top at the Prix de l’Arc meeting. And Diamond Necklace is following in her sire St Mark’s Basilica’s hoof prints because he didn’t spring to prominence till the latter days of his two-year-old career: his offspring have been taking a similar amount of time. With two other Group One winning juvenile fillies in Precise and True Love, the Coolmore team will have some juggling to do for next year’s fillies’ Classics. For the moment the sparkling Diamond Necklace is favourite for next year’s One Thousand Guineas.

Christophe Soumillon, 44, ten-time winner of the Cravache d’Or (Golden Whip) the French jockey’s championship, is sans pareil in Paris but after winning both the multi-million euro races for Arab horses – Qatar getting its sponsorship money back through the victories of their Al Shaqab racing pair (the same colours having been carried by Treve to successive Arc victories in 2013-14). Soumillon was thwarted in his bid for just a third Arc triumph and his first since Zarkava in 2008. He had previously also won the race on Dalakhani in 2003 for the late H H Aga Khan IV who died earlier this year.

Now it was Mickael Barzalona’s turn to don those famous silks with Minnie Hauk favourite to give Aidan O’Brien his third Arc. The race turned out to be duel between Daryz and Minnie Hauk with the rest left trailing. This was Daryz’s first race beyond ten furlongs and only the seventh of his career – crammed into six short moths. His career highlights just how much circumstance plays in the unravelling of form. He’d been last in a bizarre race for the Juddmonte International (Gr1) in August at York and bounced back in the Prix de Prince d’Orange (Gr 2) – not a typical Arc trial, Saumarez in 1990 was the latest to win the two – and neither did Daryz,

The Arc winner was runner up to the Japanese horse Croix du Nord. It is hard to describe the ache in the hearts of Japanese race fans who annually all but take over Longchamp on Arc day but even their inscrutable faces betray their constant lack of success in the race they dream about. Their countenances and their cameras – which they all carry in anticipation of the great moment that never arrives – both droop.

Perhaps Croix du Nord, with a French name but not the most favoured in the betting of the Japanese team of three, but without team tactics suffered from his wide draw. That may not appear an insuperable disadvantage over 2400 metres but the effort and stress of obtaining a challenging position – he led quite soon - left him a spent force as the field turned for home.

The drawing board that the Japanese employ to plot their Arc assaults, needs a new surface – incidentally the softened ground at Longchamp which predominates at this time of year is not what Japanese horses are used to performing on.

Coolmore may have their accustomed final word in next year’s Arc, with their legions of top two-year-olds already being assembled and their marching orders being drawn up months in advance of next season. But the real hero of this season has been Francis Henri Graffard and he is the man with whom Aidan O’Brien will engage in battle many times in future.

Winning jockey Mickael Barzalona, 34, champion in France in 2021, has been first jockey to Godolphin, and is in his first year retained by Aga Khan Studs. He won the Derby at Epsom aged 19 and is a class act.

Graffard, having done the Grand Tour of the world of trainers gaining experience, followed Alain de Royer Dupre, to whom he had been assistant, as trainer to the Aga Khan Studs in 2021. His rise looked meteoric - until this year when it has gone stratospheric. He could even state with conviction, but without hubris, that brooked no contradiction that every facet of the plan with Daryz had worked out. That couldn’t surely have included finishing last at York, or even being beaten by Croix du Nord at Longchamp just three weeks previously.

But blood will out: Daryz is, as already suggested, by the unbeaten 2009 Arc and Derby winner Sea the Stars out of the group winning Aga Khan mare Daryakhana herself dam of five previous high-class winners.

And Graffard has that indefinable measure of ‘class’. “I’ve realised today just how special the Arc is. Before it was just a dream but now it’s happening to me – it’s very special.”

The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe a dream – yes amen to that.