Bill Mott at the verge of executing Royal Delta’s World Cup plan
On 27 March, 2012, trainer Bill Mott arrived at Dubai, who won the inaugural running of the Dubai World Cup back in 1996 with the 1995 Horse of the Year, Cigar. The veteran trainer is now sending out the 2011, 3-year-old champion filly, Royal Delta, who
he got reunited with yesterday.
Bill Mott will be saddling Royal Delta in this year’s Group 1, $10 million Dubai World Cup at the Meydan over a distance of 1 ¼ miles on the Tapeta surface. Royal Delta was shipped from Florida to Dubai a week ago, and since then the filly has been training
for the Dubai World Cup.
Just because you think, what do you do with one like this?” said Mott. “What’s the next challenge? If she’s that good you got to think about the big races.”
Bill Mott said that about the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Ladies Classic winner last fall at Churchill Downs, going over a distance of 1 1/8 miles. The filly went through the Keeneland November 8 auction ring, and got sold to Benjamin Leon for $8.5 million. Now
the filly will run under the banner of Besilu Stables, the name Leon uses when he races.
Bill Mott trained Royal Delta before, but under the ownership of Prince Saud Bin Khaled, who died 1 February, 2011, and the filly’s future in racing was about to be over after the Breeders’ Cup.
There were many buyers linked with Bill Mott, who wanted to buy her even before she saw the auction ring, but she went through it and Leon bought her.
After the sale, Royal Delta was at Besilu Stables and stayed there on a vacation, and that is where Bill Mott met Leon and proposed the idea of running her in the Dubai World Cup.
“At that point I met with him I told him what I’d like to do with her if he was going to give her to me,” Mott said. “I still hadn’t had her in the barn. I said, ‘If we’re going to do it we got to get her started.’ ”
It was a prep race first for Royal Delta, and that was the Sabin Stakes where she finished as a runner up, but still had her connections hopes high going into the World Cup.
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