Ertijaal, who is surely one of the fastest horses in the world, is the leading actor at Meydan on Thursday as he aspires to stretch his exceptional Dubai record in the G2 Meydan Sprint – one of six simulcast attractions from the UAE’s outstanding racecourse.
Barely heard of before his five-year-old career, his regular rider Jim Crowley tends to use the language of super-fast mechanisms to describe the now seven-year-old. The British-based rider says Ertijaal is like ‘an aeroplane’ and also: “He’s a Rolls Royce. Wherever he goes he’s just a joy to ride.”
Admittedly Ertijaal hasn’t gone far, with a reclusive career since January 2015 that has simply revolved around Meydan (11 starts) and Abu Dhabi (1 start). He has won seven of his last nine races with Meydan’s 1000m turf sprint track proving his real metier as he showed when scattering the opposition in this race last year. In addition to the prestige of that scintillating win he also became the first speedster to dip under 56 seconds (55.9) over course and distance.
Ertijaal has so much early speed that it is easy to imagine him again stealing a quick advantage though Godolphin’s Blue Point – who appears his most interesting rival – also has masses of early boot as he showed with a G3 gate-to-wire victory at Ascot last October, his latest start.
Blue Point’s trainer Charlie Appleby has been in blinding form during the Carnival and he sent out two more winners at last Saturday’s meeting. And Appleby doesn’t sound too worried about the decrease from Blue Point’s usual 1200m to this pure speed journey, commenting on the four-year-old colt: “We’ve always believed that he could become a top class sprinter and now he’s becoming one. I am really looking forward to seeing what he can do this year.”
Other intriguing contenders on Thursday include the expected return of Whisky Baron in the G2 Zabeel Mile over 1600m.
A vast improver since being gelded, he had wowed South African race fans with a string of victories climaxing with a forceful triumph in the hugely prestigious Met at Kenilworth in January 2017. Subsequent problems meant a serious scheme directed towards last December’s HKIR at Sha Tin had to be abandoned by Whisky Baron’s Cape Town- based trainer Brett Crawford who has said that he thinks there is a lot more still to come from this big, powerful horse.
