Heavy Metal one of several heavyweights in Al Maktoum Challenge
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It’s difficult imagining a deeper renewal of the Group 2, $350,000 Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1 than the featured fifth race Thursday night at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai.
Among the nine entered is Heavy Metal, winner of this race one year ago and the Group 2 Godolphin Mile on the Dubai World Cup card last March 31, his most recent race. Heavy Metal won the Godolphin Mile less than one month after his trainer, Salem bin Ghadayer, was suspended a year after one of his United Arab Emirates runners tested positive for the drug ketamine. Bin Ghadayer’s stable was taken over by assistant trainer Sandeep Jadhav, who brought the gelding up to his $1 million win more than nine months ago.
Heavy Metal is a 9-year-old now and only one of several options in Thursday’s 1,600-meter race, contested around one turn on dirt.
North America finished third in the 2018 Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1 and won Round 3 before finishing up the track in the Dubai World Cup, his most recent start. The five-time Meydan dirt winner prefers to lead or race close to the pace, but twice broke poorly last Dubai season, including in the World Cup itself.
Also making his first start since the World Cup card is 4-year-old Gold Town, for whom Godolphin and trainer Charlie Appleby surely have high hopes this winter. Gold Town, by Street Cry, won laughing in his first two dirt starts during the 2018 World Cup Carnival, but failed to make the front on the speed-biased World Cup card racing surface and checked in a distant fourth behind victorious Mendelssohn in the Group 1, $2 million UAE Derby.
Two horses make their first start on dirt, both with a pedigree chance of adapting to the new surface. Five-year-old African Ride is by Candy Ride out of Paiota Falls, by Kris S, and is a listed stakes winner on an all-weather surface in France and Grade 3-placed on turf. Simon Crisford took up his training last summer after he was purchased by owner Nabil Mourad, likely with an eye on winter dirt racing in Dubai.
Four-year-old Massarr, trained by Nichols Bachalard, also is Group 3-placed on turf and was an all-weather winner in the autumn of 2017. He’s by American sire Distorted Humor and out of a Galileo mare, copes with distances from 1,600 to 2,000 meters, and could prove a factor in his first start outside Europe.
Neither are World Cup Carnival veterans Muntazah, Kimbear, and to a lesser extent Etijaah easy tosses, while the Korean horse Dolkong, making his Dubai debut, rounds out a substantive group.
Post time for the Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1 is 11:50 a.m. Eastern on a card that begins at 9:30 and includes the $100,000 UAE 2000 Guineas Trial, the first local step toward the UAE Derby. Easily the most interesting entrant there is Royal Marine, who showed plenty of 2-year-old turf talent for Godolphin and trainer Saeed bin Suroor. Royal Marine finished sixth in his debut before winning a maiden race and capping his 2018 campaign with a win in a potentially substandard edition of the Group 1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere at Longchamp. By Raven’s Pass out of Inner Secret, by Singspiel, he makes his dirt debut Thursday.