There couldn’t be a more unconventional training duo than Belgian-born Fabrice Vermeulen and Jeremy Para, who hails from Lyon.
Whilst Jeremy Para, in charge of communicating with owners and selecting horses at the sales, comes from a racing background, Fabrice Vermeulen, who holds the training licence, used to work in “Le Queen”, one of Paris’s most famous nightclubs on the Champs-Elysées.
Based in Chantilly since 2013, with another training yard in Marseille, they came to everyone’s attention when the Martin Schwartz-owned Lily’s Candle lifted the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac in 2018. It was a first Group 1 success for the trainer, who will be saddling Chachnak in the Prix du Jockey Club on Sunday - live on Sky Sports Racing.
Here, Jeremy Para tells Liz Price of attheraces.com about Chachnak’s chances and some of the older horses before introducing us to some of the exciting two-year-olds he hopes will be able to follow in Lily’s Candle’s hoofprints.