Coal Front takes Godolphin Mile, giving Pletcher first Dubai winner

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Coal Front gave trainer Todd Pletcher his first Dubai winner with his 17th starter, winning the Group 2, $1.5 million Godolphin Mile by three-quarters of a length late Saturday afternoon at Meydan Racecourse.

Pletcher has been sending horses here for years and had three seconds and four thirds before finally breaking through. Jockey Jose Ortiz? He’s now 1 for 1. In his first Dubai ride, Ortiz helped Coal Front overcome post 12 to win his seventh race from just nine starts.

“I never rode this track before, so I’m trying to follow other guys,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz broke Coal Front sharply enough, navigated the short dogleg of this one-turn mile before bending onto the backstretch, stalked the pace while hung four wide, and kept his eye on the jockey of Muntazah, considered the horse to beat here after an easy win March 9.

“I waited for Jim Crowley to make his move, and then I made mine,” said Ortiz.

Muntazah’s move didn’t take him far, but the pacesetter and 2018 Godolphin Mile winner, Heavy Metal, wasn’t stopping. He battled furiously through the length of the homestretch, Ortiz – timing things as though he’d been riding here all his life – finally getting his mount to the front three strides from the winning post.

Coal Front won by three-quarters of a length as the top two broke clear of the pack, Muntazah chugging home third, 5 3/4 lengths farther back. The winning time for the 1,600 meters over a fast track was 1:36.51.

African Ride was scratched just before the start of the race. True Timber, the other American in the race, finished a troubled ninth.

Pletcher, who stayed home for the major Florida Derby card and to work a couple dozen horses at the Palm Beach Downs training center, was overdue for a win on the World Cup card.

“We’ve had a couple of quality seconds, but we haven’t been able to win one, so that was great. I’m happy for the horse; he’s a beautiful horse, a courageous horse,” Pletcher said.

Coal Front won his first three starts as a 3-year-old in 2017, was fifth in the H. Allen Jerkens Stakes, then rebounded to capture the Gallant Bob in September, but that would be his last start until November 2018.

Coal Front flopped in his comeback run but rebounded to win the Mr. Prospector Stakes at Gulfstream before stretching out to two turns for the first time in the Razorback Handicap at Oaklawn Park, winning by a neck. Coal Front settled and finished with stamina Saturday, perhaps a result of cutting back from that route race, and scored the most important win of his career.

A ridgling, the 5-year-old Coal Front, owned by Robert LaPenta and Head of Plains Partners, is by Stay Thirsty (a Pletcher horse himself) and out of the Mineshaft mare Miner’s Secret.