O'Neill runners headed to Dubai include stakes winners Fore Left and Fight On

ARCADIA, Calif. – The stakes winners Fore Left and Fight On and the stakes-placed runners Ocean Fury and Parsimony are among 10 horses trained by Doug O’Neill scheduled to be sent to Dubai next week for a late winter and early spring campaign.

The Dubai World Cup Carnival of top-class races at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai began on Jan. 2 and continues through Dubai World Cup night on March 28, an evening of eight Group 1 or Group 2 stakes for Thoroughbreds, including the $12 million Dubai World Cup.

O’Neill says he hopes to run some of those horses in Dubai as soon as the end of this month.

“They’re all fit and ready,” O’Neill said. “Once they settle in and there is a race for them, they’ll run.”

Fore Left won two sprint stakes for 2-year-olds in 2019, but in his latest start was 10th of 13 in the Grade 3 Cecil B. DeMille Stakes at a mile on turf at Del Mar on Dec. 1. Fight On won the Fifth Season Stakes at Oaklawn Park last April and was fourth in the Grade 2 San Antonio Stakes at Santa Anita on Dec. 28.

Ocean Fury was third in the Let It Ride Stakes at a mile on turf at Del Mar in November and seventh in the Grade 2 Mathis Brothers Mile on turf at Santa Anita on Dec. 28. Those races were for 3-year-olds. Parsimony was second in the Cinema Stakes on turf last June and second in the Grade 3 Los Alamitos Derby on dirt last July.

The other O’Neill runners scheduled to be sent to Dubai are Blitzkrieg, I Will Not, Prodigal Son, Torosay, Truck Salesman, and Wildman Jack.

O’Neill will have stables in Arkansas, Dubai, and California this winter – 12 horses at Oaklawn Park, 10 in Dubai, and 50 to 60 runners in Southern California at Santa Anita and the San Luis Rey Downs training center.

In the past, O’Neill has had in excess of 100 horses in training in California alone.

“We’re way down, but everyone has a smaller stable,” he said.

There has been a decline in the number of horses in training in Southern California over the last year because of competition from other circuits with higher purses and the tougher medication rules put in place in California following a series of equine fatalities at Santa Anita last February and March.

O’Neill’s current stable does not include Stubbins, a two-time stakes winner who was a fast-closing fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Santa Anita on Nov. 2. Stubbins recently underwent surgery to have a bone chip removed from a knee and is being given a rest with the goal of a springtime return, according to O’Neill.

“It was a minimal thing,” he said.

Saturday, O’Neill has three runners on the nine-race card at Santa Anita, including the outsider An Eddie Surprise in the Grade 3 Las Cienegas Stakes for fillies and mares at 5 1/2 furlongs on turf.

O’Neill, 51, won the Kentucky Derby in 2016 with Nyquist and in 2012 with I’ll Have Another.