Dubai World Cup

The Dubai World Cup, which will be run as the final event at Nad al Sheba today at 18.30 CET, is the richest race in the world and looks much more open than usual. In previous years, there has always been a hot favourite, but that is not the case now and there are several serious candidates in the field of 14. None of them are as strong as last year´s winner Curlin, but Asiatic Boy (Mike de Kock/ Johnny Murtagh) and Well Armed (Eion Harty/ Aaaron Gryder), second and third to him a year ago, try again with clear chances of going one or two better. There has been strong support for the Japanese hope Casino Drive (Kasuo Fujisawa/ K Ando), while local hopes rest mainly on Godolphin´s My Indy (Saeed bin Suroor/ Frankie Dettori), who has won twice here in good style, but now meets much better opposition. However if there is a real champion in the field, it would have to be Albertus Maximus (Kieran McLaughlin/ Alan Garcia); he was an easy winner of the Breeders Cup Dirt Mile last Oc tober, following which he was sold to Sheikh Hamdan and moved to his present trainer, who took this race 2 years ago with Invasor. The problem here is that he was not very impressive when winning the Donn Handicap last time out and especially that he is unproven over today´s distance of 10 furlongs. However connections seem confident that this will not be a problem, and he is our selection to beat course specialist Asiatic Boy.

Betting forecast:
7. Race: Asiatic Boy - Albertus Maximus - Casino Drive