Thursday night, like so many nights before it at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai, belonged to Godolphin, which won four of the eight races on the card, including the featured Cape Verdi Stakes with Promising Run, and one division of the UAE 2000 Guineas with the promising first-time dirt runner Gold Town. Charlie Appleby trains Gold Town, but Godolphin’s other three winners are under the care of Saeed bin Suroor. Besides the Cape Verdi, Bin Suroor won the first race on the card, a high-level 2000-meter handicap, with Don’t Give Up, a 4-year-old Dubawi colt making his first start on dirt, and also landed race 8, a 2000-meter turf handicap in which Mountain Hunter made all the running under Christophe Soumillon and won by three lengths. Promising Run’s greatest obstacle in the Cape Verdi, a Group 2, $200,000 turf mile for fillies and mares, was getting into the starting gate for the first run of her third winter in Dubai. Blindfolded and blanketed, she raised a small pre-start ruckus before being coaxed into the metal monster. “It’s one of her trademarks,” said jockey Pat Cosgrave. “She does her own thing at her own time.” Once the race began, Promising Run behaved professionally, settling in just behind the pacesetter Rehana, who struck a defiant attitude of her own, pulling imprudently on the reins as jockey Pat Smullen tried to settle her on the lead. Rehana eventually came back into Smullen’s hands, but the damage already had been done. The 400- and 800-meter splits were tepid, and when Cosgrave pulled Promising Run out at the top of the stretch to challenge Rehana, Promising Run had little trouble taking her measure, with nothing coming from behind. Promising Run was no sure thing to produce the needed acceleration over a distance as short as a mile at this level, but the mare appears to run especially well fresh – she was a Group stakes winner in her first start last winter at Meydan – and she cruised home 4 1/2 lengths the best. Rehana won a tight photo with Aljuljalah for second, with Opal Tiara well back in fourth and South African import Smiling Blue Eyes fifth. “You don’t know how she’s going to quite run, but she’s a talented filly when she gets racing,” Cosgrave said. Promising Run is a 5-year-old homebred by Hard Spun and out of Aviacion, by Know Heights. Gold Town and El Chapo were the winners of the two UAE 2000 Guineas Trial divisions, but it was Gold Town’s performance that stood out. Gold Town, a Godolphin homebred by Street Cry out of Pimpernel, by Invincible Spirit, was a decent turf 2-year-old last year in England, but his connections believed he would handle the Meydan dirt, and they were right. Making an early lead under William Buick in the 1400-meter (about seven-furlong) race, Gold Town went a solid 800 meters in 47.82, took a clear lead into the homestretch, and really poured it on for the next eighth of a mile, opening a huge advantage before Buick really geared him down the last half-furlong. He was timed in 1:25.081 while beating Roland Rocks by 4 1/4 lengths, a margin that could have been far greater had Buick not signaled Gold Town’s work was done well before the line. “He won very well, and he gave a great feel,” Buick said. “He stepped on the gas today. He seems like a horse that can improve, as well, and he felt very natural on the dirt, which not many horses here in Dubai do. It’s not easy to quicken on the surface, but he did tonight.” Gold Town figures to make his next start in the 1600-meter UAE 2000 Guineas, and El Chapo should be among his opponents. A 17-1 shot in North American betting, El Chapo took the measure of Godolphin’s Racing Country by a half-length in the second division of the UAE 2000 Guineas Trial, but this division was slower from start to finish, and El Chapo was timed in 1:26.095. Trained by Fawzi Noss and ridden by Luke Morris, El Chapo, to his credit, has won three races in a row now, and he hit the mark in his dirt debut despite having a European turf pedigree. El Chapo is by Lethal Force and out of the Diktat mare Never Lose, and he fared much better Thursday than race favorite Tangled, who broke poorly, took a lot of kickback, and checked in last of 10.