When Okawango breaks from the gate in Sunday's Audemars Piguet QE II Cup, he will be trainer Christiane (Criquette) Head-Maarek's first starter in Hong Kong. But while her name may be unfamiliar to many race fans at Sha Tin, her achievements in a 25-year training career in France bear the closest scrutiny and make it a name to remember.

"I am looking forward to having my first runner in Hong Kong," she said from Chantilly on Tuesday. "Okawango was a Group 1 winner as a two-year old, and ran well in the Prix du Jockey Club as a three-year old. He had a long break after the Grand Prix de Paris, and he needed the race on his comeback this year after such a long lay-off, when he ran well to finish second over a distance of 1600 metres that was too short for him.

"But he ran well enough to tell me that we should go to Hong Kong with him. The 2000 metres will suit him, and he will not mind whatever the ground is like, He has come out of the race very well, and I think is ready to run to his best form."

Criquette's pedigree for the training role is immaculate. Her grandfather Willy was a champion jockey and trainer of note, her father Alec a champion trainer and now a prominent breeder, while her brother Freddie was six times champion jockey in France, and has now joined the training ranks there.

She began riding ponies at the age of four, and rode races as an amateur rider, winning on her first racecourse appearance, and never finishing out of the first four in 17 rides.

She took out her trainer's licence in 1977, and in the following year, her first full season, saddled 35 winners. In 1979, with Three Troikas she won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, the jewel in the crown of French racing.

"When I started, I was the first woman trainer in France along with Miriam Bollack-Badel, who applied at about the same time. It was a challenge, but not a problem as a woman in an essentially male profession," she said.

The win in the Arc was to be no flash in the pan. In 1986, she was champion trainer in France, and in 1987 she had her best season numerically when she sent out 107 winners. There is hardly a major race in France that she has not won.

In addition to the Arc, she has won the French 1000 Guineas six times, a French 2000 Guineas, the French Derby, the French Oaks twice, and four times in the 1990's she annexed the Prix Marcel Boussac, the most important Group 1 race for two-year-old fillies in France. Two wins in the Prix de l'Abbaye de Lonchamp, France's top sprint race, gives further proof of her all-round training abilities.

Her successes have not been confined to France. Her forays to Britain, and to Newmarket in particular, have been particularly rewarding, with a 1000 Guineas triumph with Hatoof, three Cheveley Park Stakes winners, a Champion Stakes win, again with Hatoof, and a July Cup winner in Anabaa.

Criquette Head-Maarek also notched up a Coronation Stakes success at Royal Ascot with Gold Splash in the Wertheimer colours that Okawango will carry on Sunday. She has saddled Group 1 winners in Italy and Germany, while her outstanding mare Hatoof won the E P Taylor Stakes (Gr. 1) in Canada, and the Beverly D Stakes (Gr. 1) at Arlington Park in the United States, as well as finishing runner up in the Breeders' Cup Turf.

Her most recent runner in Asia was Iron Mask, who in 2001 took the Kris Flyer Sprint at Kranji, Singapore, when ridden by Okawango's jockey in the AP QE II Cup, Olivier Doleuze.

Success for Okawango on Sunday would be a further accolade to his trainer's glittering career.