DUBAI: Best Of Times will bid to give Godolphin a third success in this weekend’s Racing Post Trophy, the concluding Group 1 event of the British flat racing season and traditionally a useful pointer to next year’s Epsom Derby.
Horses like Motivator, Authorized and Camelot have used the race as a launch pad to Classic glory and Bin Surour will be hoping that Best Of Times do the same.
Twelve months ago Roger Varian’s Kingston Hill landed the mile event en route to taking finishing second in the Derby which was won by Irish-trained Australia.
A two-year-old son of Dubawi, Best Of Times is among 13 confirmations for Saturday’s race at Doncaster where Aidan O’Brien accounts for no less than six runners.
Bin Surour’s charge is on a hat-trick having posted wins at Goodwood and Salisbury but will have to show a massive step up in class having already proved himself over a mile.
Bin Surour won the Racing Post Trophy with Ibn Khaldun in 2007 and Medaaly in 1996.
The market is headed by the Andrew Balding-trained Elm Park, who impressed when securing a third success of the season in the Group 2 Royal Lodge Stakes at Newmarket last month.
O’Brien, who has dominated the race with eight wins since Saratoga Springs in 1997, saddles second favourite Royal Navy Ship, Giovanni Canaletto, Order Of St George, Aloft, Hans Holbein and Jacobean.
O’Brien said in the Racing Post: “It will probably be Wednesday before we finalise plans, but Royal Navy Ship and Giovanni Canaletto are two we’re thinking of sending.”
Richard Hannon retired without having won the race and his son Richard will be looking to set the record straight when he saddles Tupi while John Gosden also seeks out a maiden victory with the promising Nayef colt Snoano who represent Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Minister of Finance.
Meanwhile, Sir Mark Prescott sends out his first-ever runner in the race in the unbeaten Celestial Path, a well-bred juvenile by 2005’s Guineas winner Footstespinthesand.
Restorer and Cock Of The North complete the field.
