Heavy Metal, winner of two Group 1 races in South Africa last year, and 2013 Royal Ascot winner Gale Force Ten are among 14 runners in Thursday’s $250,000 Al Fahidi Fort Stakes at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai.

The Group 2 Al Fahidi Fort is run over seven furlongs on turf.

Heavy Metal, a 6-year-old gelding, has not started since winning the Durban July Stakes over 1 3/8 miles on turf last July. Trained by Sean Tarry, Heavy Metal won the Group 1 President’s Champions Challenge over 1 1/4 miles on turf last April.

United Color won the featured Dubawi Stakes on Thursday at Meydan in Dubai, as the top three finishers from the 2013 Dubai Golden Shaheen all failed to show their best form.

The 5-year-old American-bred United Color, a son of Ghostzapper, took the initiative early in a slow-paced race over about six furlongs on Tapeta, ranging up to contend for the lead under James Doyle after about a quarter-mile, then holding off a rally from Russian Soul to win by a neck.

The second Meydan card of the 2014 Dubai World Cup Carnival features prep races for the UAE 1000 Guineas and 2000 Guineas, and the first stakes race - the $150,000 Dubawi Stakes - in the series for sprinters on the Tapeta main track.

The Dubawi includes names very familiar to followers of racing at Meydan, including the top three finishers – Reynaldothewizard, Balmont Mast, and Krypton Factor - from the Group 1 Dubai Golden Shaheen last March.

On the turf courses of England, the filly Shuruq is merely a competent performer, listed-stakes class and not much more. But on the Tapeta surface at Meydan her talent blooms, and she beat males capturing the Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1 by three quarters of a length on Thursday’s first program of the Dubai World Cup Carnival.

Thursday’s seven-race card, headed by Round 1 of the Al Maktoum Challenge, marks the first of 11 programs – mostly Thursdays – at Meydan that comprise the Dubai World Cup Carnival. The Meydan season culminates March 29 with the Dubai World Cup program, which offers purses of $27.25 million.

The British Horseracing Authority will double the amount of out-of-competition samples it tests for illegal medications in 2014 under a revision of its drug-testing policies spurred by a set of anabolic steroid scandals this year, the BHA announced earlier this week.

The BHA also plans to conduct 20 percent more post-race tests next year as part of the revisions, the authority said. The revisions go into effect Jan. 1 and “will be reviewed quarterly,” the BHA said in a release.

Orfevre, the Japanese star who was second in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in each of the last two years, ended his racing career with an emphatic victory in Sunday’s $4 million Arima Kinen at Nakayama Racecourse.

Orfevre (3-5) won the Grade 1 Arima Kinen over 1 9/16 miles by eight lengths over Win Variation. Gold Ship, who won the 2012 Arima Kinen, finished third in the field of 16.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club rolls out the red carpet for international shippers to the Hong Kong International Races, but Sunday’s Grade 1 contests at Sha Tin continued to be inhospitable to overseas runners.

While Japanese sprint star Lord Kanaloa crushed his rivals in the Hong Kong Sprint, Hong Kong-based horses won the Hong Kong Vase, the Hong Kong Cup, and were particularly dominant in the Hong Kong Mile, sweeping the race’s top three places, as European stars Moonlight Cloud and Sky Lantern played no part in the outcome.

A top-notch international contingent – perhaps the best ever – has shipped to Hong Kong for the four Group 1 races on Sunday at Sha Tin Racecourse, but the big Hong Kong races have so far proven elusive targets for international shippers.

The British Horseracing Authority announced Wednesday that trainer Gerard Butler has been suspended five years for administering steroids to nine of his horses.

The BHA action stems from positive drug tests produced last winter by Butler-trained horses. Butler, the BHA report said, admitted to seven charges against him, the most serious of which was a “gross failure to look after the interests of four horses in his care.”