Algiers suspect to run back to his last in Maktoum Challenge Round 2

Algiers might have run the best race of his life winning the Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1 going 1,600 meters on Jan. 6 at Meydan Racecourse. We shall see if he can run back to that peak going 1,900 meters in the Al Maktoum Challenge Round 2, the featured fifth race Friday at Meydan.

Algiers isn’t a young horse with upside, nor was he trying dirt for the first time when he capture Round 1 by 6 1/2 lengths. A 6-year-old trained by Simon and Ed Crisford, Algiers spent last winter in Dubai, ran all right in a pair of dirt starts at Jebel Ali, and finished eighth in the Godolphin Mile on the Dubai World Cup undercard. Where did the Round 1 performance come from, exactly? Hard to say, but bettors might do well to be wary of a repeat performance Friday in this Group 2, $350,000 contest.

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Algiers’s chief opposition probably comes not from the Maktoum Challenge Round 1, but from the Jan. 13 Thunder Snow Challenge, a 2,000-meter conditions race. The first three across the wire in the Thunder Snow – Salute the Soldier, the Uruguayan horse Atletico El Culano, and Bendoog – all might be capable of putting up a fight.

Eight-year-old Salute the Soldier was a comfortable winner of the Thunder Snow and won the Maktoum Challenge Round 2 in 2021. His best days are behind him, but 4-year-old Bendoog could come forward Friday. Fourth in the UAE Derby last March – first- and second-place finishers Crown Pride and Summer Is Tomorrow went on to race in the Kentucky Derby – Bendoog has good positional pace and the half-furlong cutback Friday should help him. Ryan Moore is in Dubai and picks up the mount for trainer Bhupat Seemar.

The Maktoum Challenge is one of four group stakes on Friday’s seven-race card (first post 9 a.m. Eastern). The stakes action starts with the Al Shindagha Sprint over 1,200 meters on turf. The action moves to turf for the Group 2, $180,000 Cape Verdi, a 1,600-meter race for older fillies and mares that features Saratoga Oaks winner With The Moonlight making her first start since a second-place finish in the Lake Placid Stakes last summer at Saratoga.

Charlie Appleby trains With The Moonlight and William Buick rides for Godolphin, which, unsurprisingly, also holds a strong hand in the Group 2, $180,000 Singspiel over 1,800 meters on grass. Buick rides Ottoman Fleet, third as the international betting favorite last out in the Jan. 13 Al Rashidiya Stakes, which was won by Valiant Prince, the mount once again of James Doyle.

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