French Grade 1 winning hurdler Il Est Francais made an exciting chase debut at Auteuil last week and will be given British targets later in the season.
The five-year-old, now trained by French-based Noel George and Amanda Zetterholm, was well-supported at Auteuil to make a successful transition to fences. He took the lead after the second fence and remained in control for the remainder of the 2m1½f trip, producing a clean round of jumping under jockey James Reveley.
Il Est Francais recorded three hurdle victories for former trainer Tom George at the back end of 2022, including the Grade 1 Prix Renaud du Vivier.
"Auteuil is not easy to jump round for your first time and he jumped round like he'd been round there a hundred times. He was very impressive," said co-trainer Noel George.
"We've been waiting to run him over fences for a while and now we've been able to do it, he impressed us as much as we thought he would. Hopefully he's got a big career over fences ahead of him.
"We have to discuss it with the owners, but I think he'll probably run at the beginning of November at Auteuil – there's a Listed race for a five-year-old chasers, which I'd like to think would be a penalty kick for him.
"After that we'll maybe consider the Coral Gold Cup meeting at Newbury or Kempton at Christmas. He'll be travelling over to the UK this year, that's for certain, but when and where that will be, I can't say for certain yet.
"Newbury would be a nice place for him to start for his first run in England as it's flat with a nice, long straight.
"I think we'll probably start him over two and a half miles because he runs over two and a half a lot over here and we can then make a decision on whether he needs to go up or down in trip.
"He's very versatile and for me, with his speed and jumping, he could easily be a two-miler in England, but we're dreaming of winning a French Gold Cup [Grand Steeple Chase de Paris] with him one day and that is over three and a half miles, so we don't want him going the wrong way."
