Meydan: Frosted, Mubtaahij compete in separate stakes Thursday

Two hopefuls for the $10 million Dubai World Cup on March 26 are scheduled to start Thursday night at Meydan, but not in the same race. Frosted, winner of the Grade 1 Wood and the Grade 2 Pennsylvania Derby, and most recently seventh in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, starts in the Group 2 Al Maktoum Challenge Round 2, while Mubtaahij, last seen finishing fourth behind second-place Frosted in the Belmont Stakes, races in the Group 3, $200,000 Firebreak Stakes.

Frosted, at 120 the highest-rated horse in the Maktoum Challenge Round 2, races about 1 3/16 miles on dirt, while Mubtaahij goes about one mile on dirt.

Barring scratches, Frosted will have eight rivals in his race, the fourth of seven on a card that starts at 10 a.m. Eastern with a stakes for purebred Arabians. Post time for the Maktoum Challenge Round 2 is 11:45. Frosted will be the first start Meydan starter for trainer Kiaran McLaughlin, who won the 2007 World Cup with Invasor at the old Nad al Sheba track. McLaughlin, who is in Dubai for the race, sent a string of five horses to Dubai last month and runs four of them Thursday night. Joining Frosted in the Maktoum Challenge is Elnaawi, who was second to Itsaknockout in a Dec. 31 Gulfstream Park allowance race, his first start in about 10 months.

Frosted, who drew post 5, will be ridden for the first time by William Buick, a retained rider for the colt’s owner, Godolphin. Frosted and all the McLaughlin horses have been training at Godolphin’s Al Marmoom training center, and Frosted will get his first feel for the Meydan surface when he steps onto the track for the post parade. He’ll be heavily favored to win Thursday despite making his first start in more than three months after a long ship to unfamiliar territory, and despite the total absence of an obvious front-runner. The race could get messy, and a local horse named Special Fighter, a solid course and distance winner of a high-end handicap on Jan. 21, might give Frosted a tussle.

The winner of the Maktoum Challenge Round 1, Le Bernardin, is one of six horses entered to face Mubtaahij in the Firebreak, race 6 on the program. McLaughlin has two entrants here in Watershed and Confrontation, and the race also includes one-time Bob Baffert trainee Indianapolis, who has failed to impress in a pair of dirt sprints this winter. Mubtaahij, trained by Mike de Kock, won four times on Meydan dirt last winter and spring, including a blowout score in the UAE Derby, which led to two starts in the Triple Crown, a Kentucky Derby eighth preceding the solid Belmont showing. Mubtaahij is the most talented horse in the race, but surely has not been trained especially vigorously for this comeback run, and the sharp Bernardin could take his measure in the Firebreak.

The card’s first Thoroughbred race is a turf sprint headlined by Ertijaal (there are two talented Ertijaal’s racing in Dubai this winter; the other one runs longer distance and was bred in Australia), a visually impressive front-end winner on the first card of the World Cup Carnival last month. Ertijaal’s official rating was bumped from 108 to 113 for his four-length score Jan. 7, and he barely qualifies for this handicap restricted to horses rated 100-113. Ertijaal and Paul Hanagan drew post 16, but that isn’t a deal-breaker in straight-course sprints over Thursday’s 1,000-meter distance.

The Group 2, $200,000 Cape Verdi, over about one mile on turf and restricted to fillies and mares, has produced high-quality winners in the past, but this year’s edition drew only seven runners. The de Kock-trained Almashooqua, imported from South Africa last year, was sixth in her first start of the Carnival and should be set to improve.