Freddie Head called his shot. Solow, the 5-year-old gelding Head trains for owners and breeders Alain and Gerard Wertheimer, never had run in a Group 1 race before Saturday night. Yet this week, as Solow readied for the Group 1, $6 million Dubai Turf, Head called him one of the best horses he ever had trained, and even called him great.
Bob Baffert won his first Dubai Golden Shaheen when Secret Circle broke a six-race losing streak dating to November 2013, holding off longshot Super Jockey to win the Group 1, $2 million dirt sprint by a head.
Mubtaahij cruised to an eight-length victory in the $2 million UAE Derby and ran his way into a start in the Kentucky Derby.
Aerovelocity and Straight Girl, the first- and third-place finishers of the Group 1 Hong Kong Sprint at Sha Tin last December, are the leading contenders in Sunday’s $1,658,831 Takamatsunomiya Kinen at about six furlongs at Chukyo Racecourse in Japan.
All week here in Dubai the racing cognoscenti have chattered about the softness of this year’s $6 million Dubai Turf, which says something about how strong the race has been in recent years.
Fields were drawn and post positions assigned late Monday for the Godolphin Mile, Dubai Gold Cup, and UAE Derby. The Godolphin Mile drew a field of 16, with likely favorite Tamarkuz stuck on the rail and another major local hope, Surfer, marooned in post 16.
Main Sequence, the champion turf horse of 2014 who won the Breeders’ Cup Turf last fall and is 5 for 5 since being imported to the U.S. from England, blew out about three furlongs down the home straight and into the clubhouse turn a little past 8 a.m. on the Tapeta training track located just southeast of the Meydan main track.
California Chrome very early Tuesday morning had his final work for the $10 million Dubai World Cup and his first-ever work for exercise rider Dana Barnes.
Alan Sherman, the son and main assistant of trainer Art Sherman, traveled with California Chrome to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby, to Baltimore for the Preakness, and to Long Island, N.Y., for the Belmont Stakes. The three Triple Crown stops all have their particular charms and quirks. But none would have prepared him for his latest trip with the 2014 Horse of the Year – to Meydan Racecourse in Dubai. “It’s different, I’ll say that,” Sherman said by phone Friday morning from Dubai.
They’re back. After basically saying thanks but no thanks in 2014, when a mere three horses made the trip, U.S.-based horses will travel en masse for the March 28 Dubai World Cup card at Meydan Racecourse.
