Subotica Surges to Win Arc : Horse racing: French-bred edges User Friendly in $1.5-million race. Arazi finally wins again in one-mile stake.

Subotica, one of only two French-breds in the race, overtook User Friendly in the final 100 yards and won the $1.5-million Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on Sunday at Longchamp.

In an earlier race on the same card, Arazi returned to the winner’s circle for the first time in six months with a four-length victory in the one-mile Prix du Rond Point. The colt was a disappointing eighth as the favorite in the Kentucky Derby and failed to win in two other starts before Sunday’s race.

In the Arc, Subotica won by a neck in the 1 1/2-mile event that drew a field of 18 horses. Subotica skipped last year’s race because of a skin disorder.

Vert Amande was third, two lengths behind the leaders and barely ahead of St Jovite. Saganeca was fifth and Dr Devious sixth.

Magic Night, second in last year’s Arc behind Suave Dancer, was boxed in most of the way and finished 13th. The filly beat Subotica in the Prix Foy three weeks ago over the same track.

The winner covered the 1 1/2 miles over a track made spongy by two days of rain in a very slow 2:40.

Sapience and St Jovite led the slow early pace over the bunched field. As the field turned for home, Subotica, ridden by France’s top jockey, Thierry Jarnet, and User Friendly moved to the lead. User Friendly held the advantage most of the final stretch, then Subotica inched past for the victory.

The horse is owned by Olivier Lecerf and trained by Andre Fabre.

“He’s a professional horse, just the right type for the Arc,” said Fabre, who is pointing his horse to the Breeders’ Cup Turf on Oct. 31.

Subotica won the Prix Ganay in May at Longchamp but was fourth in a race at Epsom and third in the Grand Prix de Saint Cloud.

Francois Boutin, Arazi’s trainer, said his colt has returned to the form that gained him the title of super horse after his victory in last year’s Breeder’s Cup Juvenile.

“We have had a lot of bad luck with this horse, and some of the press have been very unkind,” Boutin said. “This brought him right back to the top.”

Boutin did not specify Arazi’s next race, but the colt might run in the Breeders’ Cup Mile. With Steve Cauthen, his regular European jockey, aboard, Arazi covered about a mile in a very slow 1:44.

“He has been right only for about three weeks the whole season,” Cauthen said. “He was in brilliant form before the Kentucky Derby, but when he got to America, it all went wrong.”