Meydan Racecourse will celebrate its grand opening in Dubai on Thursday night with an eight-race card worth $930,000 highlighted by Round 1 of the $200,000 Maktoum Challenge, a Group 3 mile with implications down the road for both the Dubai World Cup and the Godolphin Mile.

The glittering new racecourse/hotel complex that replaces Nad Al Sheba as the United Arab Emirates' equine showpiece will play host to perhaps the strongest Round 1 of the Maktoum Challenge in its history. Godolphin will be unloading two of its big guns right off the bat in Midshipman and My Indy.

Vodka won her second consecutive Horse of the Year award on Monday from the Japan Racing Association in a vote of Japanese racing journalists. A 5-year-old mare trained by Katsuhiko Sumii for Yuzo Tanimizu, Vodka won the 1 1/2-mile Japan Cup on Nov. 29 to cap a campaign that included victories in a pair of Grade 1 miles, the Victoria Mile and the Yasuda Kinen.

Meydan Racecourse, Sheikh Mohammed s sparkling new gift to Thoroughbred racing, will open on Thursday night in Dubai to international fanfare after nearly having stalled in the race to completion. Fears that the worldwide recession, which hit Dubai particularly hard and held up construction of the facility for a brief time this past summer, have been laid to rest. The new grandstand is ready to receive customers.

Despite the news that the Breeders' Cup Classic winner, Zenyatta, could make her 6-year-old debut in the Santa Margarita Handicap on March 13, hopes remain high in the Mideast that she could still be rerouted to the Dubai World Cup. Her inclusion in the field would help to make this year's renewal of the world's richest race the deepest in its 14-year history.

Sea the Stars is the highweight horse on the 2009 World Thoroughbred Rankings at 136, the highest rating achieved since Peintre Celebre was rated 137 in 1997.

A John Oxx-trained son of Galileo, Sea the Stars earned his championship rating in the 1 1/4-mile Irish Champion Stakes.

The World Thoroughbred Rankings, determined by a panel of handicappers and racing secretaries from all of the major racing nations in the world, serve as the official European championship ratings.

The Dubai Racing Club will tweak the usual format for a new international jockeys challenge at the new Meydan Racecourse on March 5. The Meydan Masters that night will feature the winning riders of 11 of the world's most prestigious races from the previous year, with an additional invitation to go to another world-class rider to bring the total to an even dozen.

Man of Iron, the regally bred winner of the Breeders' Cup Marathon at Santa Anita in November, has had his plans for a winter campaign in Dubai scuttled by new trainer Luca Cumani.

For the first time in history, the Japanese classics will be open to foreign-trained horses in 2010. As a result, the Tokyo Yushun (Japanese Derby), Yushun Himba (Japanese Oaks), Satsuki Sho (Japanese 2000 Guineas), Oka Sho (Japanese 1000 Guineas), and Kikuka Sho (Japanese St. Leger) will now be officially recognized as international Grade 1 events.

Champions from Australia and Venezuela will soon be calling America home. Scenic Blast, the 2008-09 Horse of the Year in his native Australia, is joining John Shirreffs at Hollywood Park, while Venezuelan champion filly Bambera joins Pablo Andrade at Calder.

Eric Legrix, the winner of more than 1,300 races - 91 of them at the Group 1 or Grade 1 level - during a 27-year riding career, announced his retirement from the saddle Sunday after guiding Sparkle to victory at Kranji Racecourse in Singapore. Best known in America as the rider on Miss Alleged in her victory in the 1991 Breeders' Cup Turf at Churchill Downs, the 44-year-old Frenchman will now join Miss Alleged's trainer, Pascal Bary, as an assistant at Chantilly.