Horse Racing Preview: Dubai Sheema Classic at Meydan, Saturday
Saturday will offer some quality racing to the fans of the sport. Apart from Group 1 World Cup that will be taking place at Meydan, another event that is very much awaited and flaunted is the Group 1 Dubai Sheema Classic. The event will take place
over a distance of 1 mile , 4 furlongs and 11 yards and the competition is open for racehorses of age 4 and above. The meeting that will take place over a Tapeta surface will start at 4.50 pm GMT.
Where the return of the champion racehorse Twice Over and his trainer Henry Cecil have made the Dubai World Cup more than just a race, the Sheema Classic has been made intriguing by the trainer Roger Varian. He is particularly in the limelight because
he will be saddling a racehorse in such a mega event just a week after he received his license. It is the first time that a trainer will make a debut in an event that has a prize money of $5 million.
Varian was given the supervision of the talented racehorse Laaheb, who will be running in the Sheema Classic, after his former trainer Michael Jarvis retired due to ill health. The trainer would have been more encouraged had he inherited the colt in
“happier circumstances”, nonetheless he is more than enthusiastic to prove his mettle in this race and so make the best out of this opportunity that he has gotten. Varian is aware of the fact that the racehorse has great standards that were bestowed on his
by his former mentor Jarvis. He believes that the five-year old champion will be able to keep these standards as he runs at the Meydan racecourse.
In his gallops at the track, Laaheb has been pleasing his new trainer since they arrived in Dubai last weekend. When the trainer was approached by the correspondents regarding the development of the racehorse for the upcoming Sheema Classic, he was
reported as saying, “It would be very exciting to get going in any capacity, but to have my first runner in a race of such value is incredible, really. It’s hard to ignore the prize money, but I don’t see it as an added pressure.”
Amongst the favourite racehorses in this particular event is the winner of the last year’s Derby, Rewilding. Laaheb will also have to face substantial competition from some of the best racehorses from fields as far as France, Japan, Hong Kong, the
United Sates and Britain.
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