The ever-consistent Ballabriggs has been almost perfectly prepared for Saturday’s $1.5 million Grand National Handicap Chase at Aintree. The winner of five of his last six starts, the 10-year-old is taken to outlast his 39 rivals in the monumental 4 1/2-mile spectacle, which requires stamina and jumping prowess in equal parts over 30 demanding spruce fences.

George Strawbridge will have himself a runner in the 1000 Guineas at Newmarket after his Invincible Spirit filly Moonlight Cloud ran off to a handy two-length score in the Group 3, $114,000 Prix Imprudence at Maisons-Laffitte on Thursday.

Six international Group 1 winners have been selected by the Hong Kong Jockey Club to join two local Hong Kong Group 1 winners in the $1.5 million Champions Mile at Sha Tin on April 25. They are headed by recent Dubai Duty Free winner Presvis, who has been supplemented by owner Leonidas Marinopoulos. The 7-year-old Luca Cumani-trained son of Sakhee won the 1 1/4-mile Queen Elizabeth II Cup two years ago at Sha Tin but will cut back from the Duty Free’s nine furlongs to run in the Champions Mile.

Criquette Head-Maarek will test the English 1000 Guineas waters at Maisons-Laffitte on Thursday with Helleborine in the Group 3, $113,000 Prix Imprudence over a straight seven furlongs.

Head-Maarek has won this race 10 times in the past with Ma Biche and Ravinella also having won the English 1000. Of her two other 1000 Guineas winners, Hatoof finished second in the Imprudence and Special Duty third.

St Nicholas Abbey looked decidedly dull in his return to the races at the Curragh on Sunday as he plodded home a well-beaten third in the 1 1/4-mile Alleged Stakes, a listed race worth $56,400.

The World Thoroughbred Rankings Committee doesn’t think much of what transpired at Meydan on Dubai World Cup Night last week, preferring to award interim highweight honors for races between Oct. 1 and March 27 to the Australian sprinter Black Caviar.

The winner of three Group 1 sprints this winter, the Peter Moody-trained filly beat males in all three of those starts, taking the five-furlong Lightning Stakes by 3 1/4 lengths at Flemington on Feb. 19

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the six-furlong Newmarket Handicap by three lengths at the same track on March 12,

Reve d’Essor, the Japanese 2-year-old filly champion who would have started as the short-priced favroite for next Sunday’s Japanese 1000 Guineas, will be sidelined for at least six months after suffering a leg fracture during a workout in the past week.

Trained by Hiroyushi Moriyuki for Sunday Racing Co. Ltd., Reve d’Essor will undergo surgery at the Shadai Clinic on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the center of the Japanese breeding industry.

St Nicholas Abbey, the 2009 European juvenile champion, makes his long-awaited return to the races at the Curragh on Sunday when he goes in the Alleged Stakes, a 1 1/4-mile listed contest valued at $56,700.

Absent since failing as the even-money favorite in the 2000 Guineas last May, when he finished a dull sixth behind Makfi, St Nicholas Abbey, a Montjeu colt, missed his hoped-for return in the Finale Stakes at the Curragh on Oct. 10, with trainer Aidan O’Brien preferring to put him away for the winter.

Two European-trained horses are under consideration for the Kentucky Derby – War Pact and Master of Hounds.

The Bronx-born Joseph Allen nominated War Pact, his Kentucky-bred son of War Front, to the Triple Crown on Wednesday. Two-for-three on Fibresand at Deauville and Cagnes-sur-Mer, War Pact is ineligible for the European classics because he is a gelding.

“He will run in the Prix de Suresnes at Maisons-Laffitte on April 18,” said his trainer, Jean-Claude Rouget, on Thursday. “After that we will make a decision about America.”

Ramon Dominguez has been handed a two-day suspension by stewards at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai for his ride on Gio Ponti in the $10 million Dubai World Cup. Dominguez will serve his days April 6-7, according to his agent, Steve Rushing.