Certain LadThe Zabeel Turf, which was won in driving fashion by Mick Channon trainee Certain Lad, who was ridden by Ben Curtis for owner C. R. Hirst, who was in town for the race. A 2000m turf handicap and main support race was expected to be dominated by Godolphin, responsible for six of the 11 runners, but they were brushed aside by the winner, as well as HH Aga Khan-owned runner-up Simsir (Tadhg O’Shea aboard), trained by Mick Halford. Godolphin’s Desert Fire was the best of the blue in third, while G1 winner Dream Castle managed only seventh and G2 winner Loxley was 10th.
Fractious in the preliminaries and sent to post early as a result, the 4-year-old Clodovil-sired winner was settled well off the pace by Curtis before making stealthy progress throughout the early part of the straight, then quickening clear passing the 200m pole. Simsir was gaining at the line, but never looked like denying Curtis his 21st winner in the past 14 days. Certain Lad equalling the track record when finishing three-quarters of a length clear.
“He’s improving with every run. It’s unbelievable,” Curtis said. “The way he travelled today was even better. He’s a handful, but it’s probably good thing, because if he wasn’t a handful, they probably wouldn’t have flown me out to ride him. He does everything a horse should do to get himself beat, but he keeps winning. In the prelims he gets very warm and is notorious for it. He gets hot and sweaty, but it doesn’t seem to bother him in the race. He ran a bit fresh and keen the first two furlongs, but once he got into a rhythm, I was delighted. He picked them up well and kept going all the way to the line. It was a good performance. He ran a good race and the time backed it up.”
“He has always been a good horse, he was in good form and we had the (nerve) to go and it worked out,” Channon said. “We’ve always thought a lot of him. He won a Listed race as a 2-year-old and was consistent last year. It’s hard to place these horse, but we knew we could be competitive tonight. You never know going against Godolphin. We’ve always been competitive and never slow at having a crack (at big races). That’s why we have race horses. We’ll have a go at the best if we can and go on to the next race (at Meydan).”
Hirst added: “It’s really fantastic. We’re over the moon. We didn’t expect him to run so well in his first race. Obviously, he hasn’t run for a few months. We bought him back in the Newmarket sales because we didn’t think we got value and the plan was to send him down here with (assistant trainer) Jack Channon and obviously what can we say. Great ride by Ben. We really appreciate that he came out here to ride for us. Couldn’t have ridden a better race. We’ve won this now, but the main target was a race here on the 30th, but we’ll have to look at that now. I’d just like to say thank you to all the team who takes care of him at home to get him in this kind of condition to get him here.”
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