It's difficult what to make of the the first running of the Kentucky Derby Challenge Stakes at Kempton Park on Wednesday.
Contested at 1 1/8 miles on a Polytrack surface in England, it's actually an allowance, one that will be run under the lights and on a right-handed track. The winner gets an automatic place in the Kentucky Derby lineup, which means a more deserving American horse might get bumped.
Kauto Star reclaimed his Cheltenham Gold Cup title from a stablemate and last year's winner, Denman, on Friday with a devastating 13-length victory in the world's premier steeplechase race.
Traveling easily throughout the 3 5/16-mile, $653,000 contest, Kauto Star, the 2007 Gold Cup winner, became the first horse to regain a Gold Cup title after having lost it as he avenged his seven-length runner-up finish of a year ago.
Trincot and Loup Breton will renew their budding rivalry at Saint-Cloud on Saturday in the first group race of the European season, the $102,000 Prix Exbury.
The 1 1/4-mile, Group 3 contest will be the third time in succession these two will have faced off. Trincot beat Loup Breton by a head in winning last October's Group 2 Prix Dollar at Longchamp, while Loup Breton finished 3 1/2 lengths in front of Trincot when they ran sixth and 10th in the Hong Kong Cup on Dec. 14.
Trainer Paul Nicholls holds most of the aces in Friday's $653,000 Cheltenham Gold Cup, the 3 5/16-mile odyssey over 22 fences that rates as the world's most important steeplechase race.
Nicholls will saddle five in the great race, but most of the attention will be focused on his defending champ, Denman, and his 2007 winner, Kauto Star.
Punjabi outdueled Celestial Halo and Binocular to win a thrilling renewal of the $510,000 Champion Hurdle on opening day of Cheltenham's National Hunt Festival on Tuesday.
Forgotten in the betting at 22-1, Punjabi, a 6-year-old son of the Nureyev stallion Komaite, prevailed by a neck from the 8-1 Celestial Halo, who finished a head in front of the 3-2 favorite, Binocular.
Asiatic Boy returned to winning ways at Nad Al Sheba Thursday night with a convincing score in Round 3 of the Group 2, $300,000 Maktoum Challenge. The runner-up to Curlin in last year's Dubai World Cup, he will head into this year's edition of the world's richest race as the most accomplished of the locally trained challengers.
Nad Al Sheba's Super Thursday, aka Dubai World Cup Preview Night, features course-and-distance preps for all six of the big races on the March 28 World Cup card, but it will be not quite as super as expected because of the absence of the Godolphin-owned Eclipse Award 2-year-old champion Midshipman, and the stable's leading World Cup hope, My Indy.
Still, Thursday's eight-race, $1.4 million program is loaded with potential World Cup Night winners, with the Group 2, $250,000 Jebel Hatta, a trial for the Dubai Duty Free, especially intriguing.
Owner George Strawbridge will start the European racing season with double-barreled hopes for the classics. Already the owner of the European juvenile filly champion, Rainbow View, he has, according to the Racing Post, purchased Fantasia, a Sadler's Wells filly who finished second to Rainbow View in the Group 1 Fillies Mile at Ascot last September.
Archipenko, absent from the races since his unlucky second in the Arlington Million on Aug. 9, preps for his date in the Dubai Duty Free in the Group 3, $200,000 Zabeel Mile at Nad Al Sheba on Thursday night. The eight-race, $1.37 million card will also include the appearance of South African sprint champ J J the Jet Plane in the Al Quoz Sprint and UAE 1000 Guineas winner So Shiny in the UAE Oaks.