ENABLE scored a historic and dramatic win in the 2400m Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

The four-year-old mare, ridden by Frankie Dettori, clung on for victory by a short neck from Sea Of Class at the refurbished Longchamp racecourse.

Enable’s win was the sixth Arc success for Dettori, already the most successful rider in the race’s history.

It was also a second successive victory for his mount, owned by Khaled Abdullah.

The even-money favourite became only the seventh back-to-back winner in the race’s history.

An injury and illness-disrupted season left Enable at “only 85 per cent”, according to trainer John Gosden.

And had the William Haggas-trained Sea Of Class been better drawn, she might well have won.

Starting from gate 15 in the 19-runner line-up, jockey James Doyle had to employ daring tactics. After weaving through the field entering the home straight, Sea Of Class would have won in another stride.

“I can’t believe it,” Dettori said after the $4.7 million race. “It was my 30th Arc and it’s probably the most nervous I’ve been. She was not the Enable of last year, but got the job done.”

The trainer, who also won the 2015 Arc with Dettori-ridden Golden Horn, said: ‘It has been a nightmare year. This was not a normal preparation. You are not meant to come into the Arc off just one run on the all-weather.

‘She also had a tiny little hiccup between Kempton and here which I did not need, a slight temperature. It settled down. I had to back off a little. Her blood was not 100 per cent. I was coming here on the minimum and then she missed some more work. That is tough.

‘It was a little bit of catch-up and it showed. She did it on sheer guts and tenacity.”