Les Arcs is a dark bay or brown gelding with no white markings[3] bred by John Moran's Elk Manor Farm at North East, in Cecil County, Maryland.
In October 2003 Les Arcs (then still an entire colt) was sent to the Tattersalls sales at Newmarket and was bought by the trainer Richard Guest for 32,000 guineas on behalf of the football agent Willie McKay.
In the following year, the gelding ran thirteen times and made steady progress, winning handicaps over seven furlongs at Musselburgh in May and Chester in June as well as finishing second on four occasions.
In autumn he left Guest's yard and moved to the stable of Tim Pitt,[9] who had been working as an assistant to the National Hunt trainer Colin Tinkler when he responded to a job advertisement in the Racing Post to train for Willie McKay,[10] and was successful ahead of 44 other applicants.
Ridden by Neil Callan, he took the lead approaching the final furlong and recorded his fifth consecutive win, beating Quito by half a length, with Reverence in third and Continent unplaced.
[14] His winning run came to an end in his next race, but he improved his rating as he finished second of seventeen runners in the Listed Abernant Stakes at Newmarket Racecourse, beaten a short head by the mare Paradise Isle, to whom he was conceding nine pounds.
Les Arcs contested his first Group race at the age of six at Sandown Park Racecourse on 30 May when he finished unplaced behind Reverence on soft ground in the Temple Stakes.
On the opening day of the meeting he started at odds of 33/1 for the King's Stand, and finished eleventh of the twenty-eight runners behind the Australian gelding Takeover Target.
He overtook Takeover Target approaching the final furlong and held the late challenge of the three-year-old Balthazar's Gift to win the Group One prize by a neck.
Starting at odds of 10/1 Les Arc was positioned behind the front-runners before moving past the Middle Park Stakes winner Amadeus Wolf to take the lead inside the final furlong.
In May 2007 he started at odds of 14/1 for the Duke of York Stakes and finished thirteenth of the seventeen runners behind Amadeus Wolf at a time when many of Pitt's horses were suffering from ill health.