Godolphin holds aces in Meydan stakes

Blue Point’s start Thursday night in the Group 2, $250,000 Meydan Sprint almost has to go better than his last trip to the post at Meydan Racecourse.

In fact, Blue Point got only as far as the starting gate last March 30 in the Group 1 Al Quoz Sprint before being scratched by the track veterinarian. In the end, not the end of the world. Blue Point’s Charlie Appleby-trained, Godolphin-owned stablemate Jungle Cat won the Al Quoz a few minutes later, while Blue Point himself was back in action two months later and wound up winning the Group 1 King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot last summer.

Now Blue Point is back for his first start since August and set to take on six rivals in this straight-course 1,000-meter -- about five furlongs -- dash during a card that includes the Group 2, $250,000 Balanchine Stakes and the Group 3, $200,000 Firebreak Stakes.

Blue Point’s only previous Dubai appearance came in the 2018 Meydan Sprint, where he finished strongly but was unable to catch Ertijaal, who loved nothing more in racing than to fly down the Meydan 1,000-meter course on the lead. This year the chief rival could be Fatinaah, although Fatinaah went from a razor-sharp handicap win in his first Dubai start this winter to a third-place finish in a similar race last out. Blue Point has for the most part looked like a horse better suited to 1,200 meters than 1,000 but his King’s Stand win at Ascot came over the shorter of those distances.

There are even fewer entrants in the co-featured Balanchine, and 1,800-meter, one-turn turf race for fillies and mares that will have Poetic Charm as an even shorter favorite than Blue Point. Four-year-old Poetic Charm, also trained by Appleby for Godolphin, won four races in Europe as a 2-year-old and 3-year-old and rebounded from a poor showing in the Valley View Stakes at Keeneland last October to ace her Dubai debut last month in the Group 2 Cape Verdi. There, Poetic Charm and jockey James Doyle waited at the back of another short field, swooped, and won off by four lengths. William Buick, suspended for that race because of a Hong Kong infraction in December, takes over Thursday from jockey James Doyle, but the result should be similar.

The Firebreak, a 1,600-meter dirt race that’s a prep for the prep for the Godolphin Mile on Dubai World Cup night, also has seven entrants but should be far more competitive. Heavy Metal is the most accomplished horse in the Firebreak but clunked home ninth making his first start of the Dubai season Jan. 10 in the Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1. Heavy Metal’s prospects for a bounce-back race would look brighter were he not a 9-year-old, which is old even by Dubai racing’s standards.

Kimbear by contrast is just a 5-year-old and while no match for a powerhouse performance from North America in that Jan. 10 race chugged along for second. He’s a Group 3 course-and-distance winner for trainer Doug Watson who’s capable of winning this.

Muntazah was third in the Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1 and has the same rating, 109, as Kimbear. The field also includes U.S. expatriate Behavioral Bias, who was third in the Group 3 Jebel Ali Mile making his Dubai debut last month and stands to improve Thursday for trainer Sateesh Seemar, who has North America as his stable star.

Switzerland, a more recent American expat, also sees action Thursday as he starts in a 1,200-meter dirt handicap race for horses rated 99-108. Switzerland, with a 107 rating, slips neatly into that classification but was last of six Jan. 31 in the Al Shindagha Sprint at Meydan having recently shipped from the U.S. for trainer Steve Asmussen, who has two horses stabled in Dubai this winter.

First post for a seven-race program that begins with a Purebred Arabian race is 9:30 a.m. Eastern.