Dubai: Newmarket Racecourse is set to stage a key highlight of the British flat-racing season this week with the July Meeting featuring top quality contests like the Falmouth Stakes (G1) and July Cup (G1).
The three-day festival is jam-packed with classy events and kicks-off on Thursday with the Group 3 Bahrain Trophy, a testing 2,615 metre event for three-year-olds. The opening day’s action also features the Group 2 Princess of Wales’s Stakes for three-year-olds plys over 2,400m.
One of the season’s top races for three-year-old fillies, the 1600m Falmouth Stakes, forms the centrepiece of Friday’s action which also includes the Duchess of Cambridge Stakes, an important contest for two-year-old fillies.
The Festival’s centrepiece event, the Darley July Cup, is the final day’s highlight. The 1200m sprint is a key pointer to Europe’s sprinting championship.
Slade Power, winner of three out of four starts this season including the Group 1 Diamond Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot is the star attraction in the July Cup, the sixth leg of the Global Sprint Challenge series, preceded by the Golden Jubilee and followed by the Sprinters Stakes.
Trained by Ed Lynam, who has enhanced his reputation as one of Britain’s top handlers in the sprinting division, Slade Power was earlier this week sold to Darley Stud, owned by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
Darley announced on Monday that the outstanding sprinter will join its Kildangan Stud roster from 2015.
However, the five-year-old will remain with Lynam and race in the colours of its previous owners Mrs Sabena Power Power for the remainder of the season.
Slade Power, who was third in the July Cup 12 months ago is likely to have his swansong in the VRC Sprint during the Melbourne Cup carnival in November.
Darley managing director in Ireland Joe Osborne describes Slade Power as “an incredibly tough racehorse who consistently performs at the highest level”.
“He’s the northern hemisphere’s best sprinter and with a physique to match,” he said in the Daily Mail.
Lynam also saddles five-furlong specialist Sole Power in the July Cup.
Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Minister of Finance, whose horses have been in rousing form this season, is represented by Aljamaaheer who finished a length and a quarter behind Slade Power in the Diamond Jubilee Stakes.
His trainer Roger Varian said: “He has got a length and three-quarters to make up on Slade Power, it’s a tough division and we have got to turn the form book around.
“But, without fishing for excuses, I still think that it is fair to say that he still has another couple of pounds worth of improvement in him.
“Paul Hanagan rightly said that we spent the whole of last year trying to get him to switch off [over a mile]. He is still adjusting to new race conditions and this is only his third try at sprinting.
“He is in very good condition at the moment and we really want to try and bag one of these top races with him. He wore blinkers last time and I think that they helped a little bit so he will wear them again.”
