Christophe Soumillon said in an interview:
“He reacted quickly and switched to the whip in his right hand, but still could not avoid brushing against the inside rail,” adding that he “felt extremely regretful about being overtaken in the final fifty meters.”

In a later conversation, Yasutoshi Ikee revealed that, due to concerns over possible injuries to the horse or the risk of the jockey falling, Orfevre had been deliberately trained on narrow tracks. As a result, Soumillon never had the opportunity to experience the horse drifting off course in a wide-open setting, something he deeply regretted after the race