Dubai: Emotionless, Godolphin’s big Classic and the ante-post favourite for next year’s Epsom Derby (G1), ticked all the right progressive boxes when delivering a smart piece of work at Newmarket racecourse’s Rowley Mile course on Wednesday morning.
Working over six furlongs in the company of stable mates Wentworth Falls and Holiday Magic, the unbeaten Shamardal colt who was partnered by William Buick, breezed through the track’s testing ‘dip’ before smoothly changing gears in the final furlong to pull clear.
An impressive winner of the Group 2 Champagne Stakes at Doncaster earlier this month, Emotionless makes his next appearance in the Group 1 Dubai Dewhurst Stakes on October 10 where he is set to take on Group 1 National Stakes hero Air Force Blue, the favourite for next season’s English 2,000 Guineas (G1).
Explaining the significance of the racecourse exercise, as opposed to using the standard training grounds at Newmarket, Appleby said in a press release: “We are only ten days away from the Dubai Dewhurst so it was just routine work with his usual lead horses and I was very happy with what I saw.
“I just wanted to give him a bit more experience, get him off site, get him on the horsebox and bring him away. The dip here [ground undulation that can catch three-year-olds out] is something that horses sometimes don’t handle very well, so I just wanted him to experience it and William was very happy with the way that he travelled throughout the piece of work.
“At the moment we are all on target for the Dubai Dewhurst Stakes.”
The £500,000 (Dh2.78 million) contest is the centrepiece of the inaugural Dubai Future Champions Festival, a two-day event on October 9-10 which combines world class two-year-old races with premier older age contests, and is strongly supported by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
“The Dubai Future Champions Festival is a great event. It is just what it says — you get to see the champions of the future,” he said. “It’s extremely kind of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad to have supported it in the way that he has and we are certainly going to embrace it.
“It’s just great to have a horse like Emotionless that is going to be a leading contender.
“Everyone’s calling it [Dewhurst Stakes] the ‘Clash Of The Titans’ between ourselves and Air Force Blue, and you can’t fail to be impressed with the Irish horse, but I’m sure there will be other horses turning up to be genuine contenders as well,” added the Godolphin handler.
“It will be exciting and it’s just what Ballydoyle against Godolphin clashes used to be like.”
