It's a waiting game for Sinndar

Reputations and their tangible worth in bloodstock cash will be sorted in the coming weeks - by the connections of yesterday's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe hero Sinndar and also by those of the vanquished Montjeu.

Winning owner the Aga Khan doubts his three-year-old colt - the only horse to succeed in the Epsom and Irish Derbies and the Arc - will race again this season.

But he must decide whether the risks to keep Sinndar in training next year are outpointed by the long-term financial arguments for immediately retiring him.

"Sinndar has shown he is one of the greats," said the Aga Khan. "I'd have to put him in the league of Mill Reef and Sea-Bird - those kind of horses. We were fairly confident beforehand that he was an exceptional horse, but we wouldn't have said it quite so firmly as we can now.

"But the problem with breeding is continuity. You can have a year or two when things go right and then it can go wrong - it's all peaks and troughs. What my family and I have been trying to do is keep the quality. I haven't made any decisions about next year, but you have to be so careful when you're talking about breeding."

Trainer John Oxx - who saddled a memorable Group One double at Longchamp with sprinter Namid earlier pulverising his Prix de l'Abbaye rivals - believes Sinndar is capable of further improvement for another year on his back. "But he couldn't go much higher than he did here," he warned. "We'll still be talking about this Arc in 2099."