Mike de Kock raced through the 100 UAE winner mark when Mahbooba won the UAE 1000 Guineas and then followed it up with three further winners. What a night for the man from South Africa who is now the leading trainer at the Carnival. Two of his winners were particularly impressive and the aforementioned Mahbooba has earnt herself a crack at the UAE Oaks and then possibly the UAE Derby too. De Kock said: “The further she goes the better she gets” so rivals will be very worried about the step up in trip.
His fourth and possibly most significant winner on the night was Bold Silvano. Such was his dominance, in the Etisalat Al Maktoum Challenge Round 2, his jockey Christophe Soumillion was able to ease him down in the final furlong and pat him, give his ears a rub and point to the horse as a star. De Kock said of his plans “he should have one more run on Super Thursday then he will be going for the Dubai World Cup”. Few will have seen an easier winner of a race for a long time and he looks sure to be an exciting prospect.
Dynamic Blitz propelled himself in to the Golden Shaheen reckoning with a marvellous display of sprinting in the Al Shindagha Sprint. This horse is an all weather specialist having won five of his last six runs on All Weather surfaces. This raises an interesting question about whether this is going to be a trend in the future. There are four or five established all weather surfaces used for racing at present and the make up of the surface on tracks in the future will ensure there are more variations of the surface so defining and All Weather specialist could become more hazy in the future. However a horse with consistent high levels of form on such surfaces should not be ignored moving forward.
One de Kock horse who would have been happy sitting in her box last week was Zanzamar as many of the horses she had beaten soundly earlier in the Carnival franked her form with Lord of the Stars winning the Classic Trial. With such a wealth of talent in his stable the de Kock bandwagon looks sure to keep rolling on right through the Carnival.
At last Thursday’s Carnival meeting I had the pleasure of shadowing Stephen Childs, the Senior Paddock Steward. His job, with his trusty team, is to ensure that the races run to time. He runs a tight schedule with every part of the pre race routine being timed to go on the specified second. His responsibilities ranged from getting the horse in the paddock on time, the jockeys on board and the horses leaving the paddock in time to get to the Starter Shane Ryan so that he can get the race off in perfect time. The behind the scenes operations at the UAE racecourses are very impressive and insure that everything remains on schedule no matter what is thrown at them.
Twitter updates this week include Michael Bell reporting “Wigmore Hall bang on target for Dubai”. Ed Dunlop Tweeted: “Received our official invitation to World Cup for Snow Fairy, very exciting and if all well, l plan to send her there two weeks before race.” And then followed it up with “Snow Fairy now doing 2 canters every day and will start fast work next week in preparation for Dubai. Pleased so far with her.” Twitter continues to be a great source of information for racing fans.
Senior Handicapper Melvin Day would have slept soundly on Friday night when Snaafy confirmed the ratings were exactly correct when sauntering away with the Jebel Ali Mile. On what was a great afternoon of high quality action Jebel Ali were rewarded for increasing their prizemoney and that was reflected with the horses that competed. No one could remember a higher rated horse running at the Garden Course and Snaafy certainly obliged.
After racing there was a prize draw to win a car. I stayed behind to watch this wonderful spectacle unfold. The Master of Ceremonies played to his crowd beautifully. After winding them up to a fever of excitement he drew the winning ticket. Sadly it was not mine but the way he announced the winner was that of a master at work. First he announced that the winner was Sudanese which created a cheer so loud that I thought there was a seventh race taking place. Then he read out the winning number very slowly and eventualy there was one man left cheering. He won the Nissan Sunny and there were jubilant scenes. It was a lovely way to end a great day at Jebel Ali.
There was a relaxed feel to racing at Meydan on Saturday evening. It was the first Meydan meeting on a Saturday other than the Dubai World Cup, and there were many fine performances including a treble for Musabah Al Muhairi and Wayne Smith with Fantastic Dubai, Zafeen Speed and Paschendale.
These winners took Al Muhairi in to the lead in the Trainers Championship,and with another winner on Sunday, the inform trainer is three clear of Satish Seemar. With Ali Rashid Al Raihe on 19 winners it looks like it is going to be a really exciting trainers competition this year and looks set to go to the wire. Wayne Smith also overhauled Taigh O’Shea in an equally compelling jockey championship.
Well done to Guignard Frederic who has taken the lead in the Race to the Dubai World Cup competition. The nature of the competition is that the leader board changes and we have a few new names to appreciate.
The action continues today at Meydan and I look forward to seeing many of you there.
No comments:
Post a Comment