Hooker Berry wins with Bazire, the Italian mare Wide Mede is second with Nivard- Corriere.it

Consecrates «the king» Jean-Michel Bazire, and resurrects «the outcast» Fabrice Souloy, the 102nd edition in Paris of the 1 million euro Prix d’Amerique of trotting on the 2700 meters of the black charcoal track of the Vincennes racecourse: Bazirein fact, 6200 successes in his career and for 20 years in a row leader of the French drivers, with the transalpine trotter Hooker Berry he has hit this world championship for the fifth time (no one ever like him), in which however he took a prestigious second place the Italian mare Wide Mede Sm trained by Souloy, Bazire’s great rival recently readmitted to competitions after 5 years of disqualification for cobalt doping.

Thus opposite parables intersect, which for the seven-year-old Wide Mede Sm begins on the 25 hectares of pine forests and the sea near Nettuno where the 73-year-old Sandro Moscati and his son Giampiero raised it: a family of breeders who curiously won the first race many years ago with a mare (Bimba Mo) entrusted that day by the coach Paolo Carta to the Rai sports journalist, horse racing commentator and amateur driver, Claudio Icardi, and who then in 2013-2014 had already had the good fortune to give birth to Mack Grace Sm, native who scored in the Gran Premio Lotteria di Agnano in Naples, in two editions of the European Championship in Cesena and even in four of the mid-August Gran Premio Città di Montecatini.

A couple of years ago the Campania owners of Wide Mede Sm, Vincenzo and Raffaele D’Alessandro, to enhance it, decided to move it from Italy (in progressive economic crisis mainly due to bureaucratic delays in paying the prizes won by the stables) to France, on the other hand, a leading nation in Europe, and here they choose Fabrice Souloy as their trainer: that is, the trainer who in 2016 the Scandinavian countries had banned for even 15 years after the Swedish anti-doping had discovered innovative cobalt treatments practiced by Souloy in some international grand prix on his horses Swedish Your Highness, French Un Mec d’Heripre, Italian Timone Ek, and Norwegian Lionel.

Sporting ruling however not recognized by France, which limited itself to revoking the license for 5 years only and only in relation to cobalt doping to which the Swedish horse Lover Face had tested positive at the Cabourg racecourse. So Souloy, having served 5 years in an environment where, moreover, everyone knew that he was always in charge behind the apparent official trainer, his brother-in-law Philippe Billard, returned to France in 2021 as a “free” horse-racing man.

And in the Italian Wide Mede Sm, objectively much improved since he has been at his court, he immediately found the first revenge of his second life as a coach. The only rival yesterday that was too much stronger was the French trotter Hooker Berry, who gave his coach and driver Jean-Michel Bazire not only the incredible relay with his son Nicolas, who also scored last year at the reins of Davidson of Pont, but also the fifth unattainable personal triumph in the Prix d’Amerique after those in 1999 with the American trotter Moni Maker, and with the French horses Késaco Phédo in 2004, Up And Quick in 2015 and Bélina Josselyn in 2019.

It’s another well-deserved record for the driver who, not surprisingly nicknamed the “Zidane” of racing, has however not been spared severe insults from life: at the age of 13 he fell from a barn and had to have a kidney removed, in 2011 he suffers several fractures in a racing accident, the following year he suffers a heavy stroke (“I felt his arm fall, I tried to lift it but it fell again”), and in 2014 he also suffered a half heart attack in the stable . Bazire has always received carte blanche from the volcanic owner of Hooker Berry, Michel Aladenise, who grew up among the cows of his farmer father, whom he left first to be a train engineer for two years and then to open two car dealerships. A black belt in judo of which he was also a regional champion, military service in the special forces of the paratroopers, Aladenise is self-taught in racehorse breeding, who grows up delighting in studying Mendel’s genetics (a bit like Federico Tesio at gallop a century ago), and taking care of the quality of the grass which in his opinion must balance the “poor” and sandy soil of the ten hectares of his estate in Châteaumeillant.

Hooker Berry was born from a curious bet: the owner of a stallion Aladenise liked, Booster Winner, offered her a free stud on condition that Aladenise presented him with a mare of equal size. And Aladenise became obsessed with Osaka Berry, a mare daughter of Idée du Corta who had never even raced, but through whom Aladenise wanted to ensure in the unborn child the bloodline dating back to the fundamental American foreman Speedy Crown. And this is how Hooker Berry came into the world five years ago, owner of a deadly final cue with which yesterday he knocked out the Swede Don Fanucci Zet (who collapsed after a ribald header up to 200 meters from the finish) and at an average of 1 ’11”7 per kilometer isolated itself from the Italian Wide Mede Sm, from Italiano Vero (which despite the name is all French) and from the other transalpine Hip Hop Haufor, with the other three Italians Vernissage Grif, Vivid Wise As and Cockstile all galloping at break trot along the course and therefore disqualified, but the first with the extenuating circumstance of having been seriously damaged by one of the 17 competitors.

But for Italy, in addition to the second place of Wide Mede Sm in the Prix d’Amerique, it was also a historic afternoon for the first “group one” grand prix won by a coach from Campania who has been doing a great job for some time in France, Vitale Ciotola, trainer of the Italian horse Cocco Bfc, scores in one of the most important contour trials for five-year-old trotters, the Prix Bold Eagle. At that late afternoon hour Hooker Berry he was already back in his box, looking out to eat the deserved extra ration of apples of which he is fond. Reward for a triumph that, before the start, had almost a premonitory sign in the parade in front of 40,000 spectators of four “old glories” trotters who have won the Prix d’Amerique in the past, including Kesaco Phedo and Up and Quick. Just two of the horses with which Bazire had already signed the world championship.