Meydan moves up a gear

The Dubai World Cup Carnival continues today with a much stronger card than was the case last week. Main event is the Group Three Al Maktoum Challenge (Round One) over a mile at 18.35 CET. All known form suggests that this will be a straight fight between Mendip (Saeed bin Suroor/ Frankie Dettori) and Musir (Mike de Kock/ Christophe Soumillon) and both have smart form at this course.

Musir actually beat Mendip in the UAE Derby in 2010, but over this trip we prefer the Godolphin runner, whose stable has made an excellent start to the meeting and was an easy winner of this a year ago. Fanunalter (Marco Botti/ Ryan Moore), a solid Group Three performer in England last year, and bin Suroor´s other runner Secrecy (Kieren Fallon) can take the minor places. We also expect a Godolphin victory in the UAE 2000 Guineas Trial over 7 furlongs at 16.55. Indeed their two runners Rassam (Dettori) and Kinglet (Mikeal Barzalona) could well take the first two places, with clear preference for Dettori´s mount.

Today´s U.K. racing is very poor by comparison. The best race is the North Yorkshire Grand National at Catterick at 15.15, but this event is unlikely to have any bearing at all on the real thing at Aintree. Our selection here is Pegasus Prince (Keith and James Reveley), who is trying this distance of 3 3/4 miles for the first time, but was staying on well enough whn winning last time at Sedgefield. The main dangers are the last-time-out winners Apache Blue (John Wade/ Keith Renwick) and Dermatologist (Caroline Bailey/ Andrew Thornton), who are both getting quite a bit of weight from Pegasus Prince. Otherwise we expect John Ferguson, out of luck yesterday, to continue his winning run with the one time useful flat horses Creekside at 13.45 and Cry of Freedom an hour later, both with Jack Quinlan in the saddle.