Jean-Claude Rouget to Cease Training Next Month

France's former champion trainer Jean-Claude Rouget has announced that he is to cease operations at the end of September, according to a report published in Paris Turf.

Rouget, 73, has reportedly informed his staff that his company will be placed in liquidation if no takeover bid is received before September 25.

France's most prolific trainer started out in Pau in the south-west of France in 1978 and for some years also ran a hugely successful satellite stable in his native Normandy. He has been crowned champion in France five times, initially topping the table in 2009, the year he won the Prix du Jockey Club for the first time with Le Havre. Further championships followed in 2016, 2020, 2022, and most recently in 2023, the year of his brilliant, unbeaten Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner Ace Impact. 

In May 2024 it was announced that Rouget was to take a break from training after being diagnosed with lymphoma. Later that summer came news of a potential training partnership with Jerome Reynier from the start of the following year, but this idea never came to fruition and by the autumn Rouget had shut down the Deauville wing of his training empire. 

Having launched his training career in the provinces with a dual-purpose stable of 10 horses, Rouget's breakthrough Group 1 success came with Millkom, the winner of the Grand Prix de Paris and Prix Jean Prat in 1994. While routinely training a large number of winners – including a decent smattering of black-type performers – from his base in south-west France, a significant turning point for the trainer came in 2009, the season in which his stable boasted not just Le Havre but also Poule d'Essai des Pouliches winner Elusive Wave, Prix de Diane and Prix Vermeille victrix Stacelita, and Never On Sunday, winner of the Prix d'Ispahan.

As his stable grew in numbers, containing horses owned by some of the sport's biggest names, including the Aga Khan Studs, Peter Brant and Al Shaqab Racing, Rouget enjoyed a particularly fruitful association with Le Havre's owner Gerard Augustin-Normand. For that same owner in partnership with Antonio Caro, he trained Le Havre's first-crop dual Classic winner Avenir Certain, and he repeated the Poule d'Essai des Pouliches-Prix de Diane double with another of the stallion's daughters, La Cressonniere, two years later.

Rouget has won the Prix du Jockey Club on six occasions, with two of those colts, Sottsass and Ace Impact, both going on to win the Arc. He also notched four wins apiece in the Prix de Diane and Poule d'Essai des Pouliches, as well as two Poule d'Essai des Poulains victories. 

In 2022, Rouget sent the Aga Khan Studs' Vadeni to Sandown to become the first French-trained winner of the Eclipse Stakes since Saint-Crespin in 1959. He saddled Literato and Almanzor to win Britain's Champion Stakes, while the latter also won the Irish Champion Stakes. Other notable wins for the trainer in the UK came in the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot, which he won two years running with Ervedya and Qemah. 

As far back as 1991, he set a new French record for the number of wins in a season with 178 victories, and he won his two final Group 1 races only last season with Le Havre colt Leffard in the Grand Prix de Paris and Ace Impact's half-brother Arrow Eagle in the Prix Royal-Oak.

Rouget grew up in the stud business in Normandy, where his father Claude managed a stud farm before becoming a trainer. With such a background, it was perhaps no surprise that Rouget is a noted judge of yearlings who has been a familiar and popular presence at the French sales in particular. At Arqana's August Sale over the years his significant purchases have included Le Havre for €100,000 and Ace Impact for €75,000.

In an interview in TDN in 2023, he said, “It's my premiere passion to buy yearlings, maybe more than to train horses. I am very happy to choose my horses myself and to train them, and to understand why I did well or why I did badly. Year after year I watch what I bought and ask myself, 'why is this one no good?' It's very interesting.”