It’s fair to say the last Dubai World Cup Carnival went out with a bang, with Arrogate’s unbelievable last-to-first thumping of the presumed 2017 American Horse of the Year Gun Runner putting a memorable end to the Carnival. Arrogate has been retired, Gun Runner has one more start until retirement and won’t be returning to Dubai, but the 2018 Carnival hums back to life Thursday at Meydan. The first of 10 Carnival programs – eight Thursdays, the Super Saturday card filled with World Cup card preps, and the World Cup card – features Round 1 of the Al Maktoum Challenge, as well as a lot of familiar horses. Peruse the entries for Thursday’s seven-race card and you will see a bevy of older horses that have been racing for several seasons in Dubai, and a lack of qualified Carnival participants is becoming an issue. Only horses with a suitable official rating are accepted to race at the Carnival, and when Meydan’s main track was converted from all-weather to dirt in great part to continue luring American horses for the World Cup, it shrank the pool of European and Australasian horses that might be considered for the Carnival. The number of accepted Carnival horses is down from 217 last year to just 132 this season. Godolphin, of course, always aspires to win the World Cup, and one of its main hopes for the 2018 edition, the 4-year-old Thunder Snow, is the favorite for the Group 2, $250,000 Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1, which goes as race 4 on Thursday’s card. Thunder Snow won the UAE Derby on last year’s World Cup card before propping and stopping just after the start of the Kentucky Derby. He went on to become a Group 1 winner last summer in France and was undone by soft ground finishing 15th in his 3-year-old finale, the Queen Elizebeth II Stakes at Ascot in October. Also among the entries is North America, who won four races in a row during the 2016-17 Dubai season, including three at the Carnival, before finishing seventh in the Godolphin Mile on the World Cup undercard. The program also includes the Group 3 Singspiel Stakes over about nine furlongs on turf, a first step toward the $6 million Dubai Turf, and the $160,000 Ladies La Grande Classique over 1,200 meters, which has the crack sprinter Ertijaal at the top of the ratings. The card begins at 9:30 a.m. Eastern. The weather is forecast to be clear Wednesday and Thursday, and course conditions should be fast and firm.