Biggest field at Jebel Ali Racecourse this weekend

dubai — The sixth race meeting titled ‘Diera’ at the historic Jebel Ali Racecourse will be the biggest yet with it drawing a massive field.

A whopping 98 runners will take to the starting gates across seven races, with one for Purebred Arabians, on Friday, making it the biggest over the 27 seasons. Apart from the 98 runners, there are 10 in reserve in three races.

And Yasir Mabrouk, Emirates Racing Authority (ERA) Master of Apprentices and Clerk of Scales, believes that the bigger field will make the action even more competitive.

“The Diera sixth race meeting splits the racing season into two halves,” Mabrouk said at the Jebel Ali Racecourse on Tuesday.

The Racecourse will host its sixth of 11 meetings on Thursday.

“It will be the biggest field for Jebel Ali this season and the past few seasons. Three or four races, there are full fields and reserves and some horses being excluded from the races because of the maximum number of participation. The feature race, Race 4, is for the youngsters —two and three year olds. It is the southern hemisphere two-year olds and northern hemisphere three-year olds because they just turned three. So, they are all unraced. Only three of them have official ratings —Eyelool, Refulgence Star and Happy Harmony. So, it is an open race. It will be tough for the crowd to select the winner. We also expect a very competitive day and as usual Jebel Ali has got a very good card and it should be an entertaining afternoon,” he added.

Jebel Ali Stables trainer Nicholas Bachalard has Eyelool, the ride of Olivier Doleuze, while Satish Seemar saddles Refulgence Star, the mount of Richard Mullen. Happy Harmony is trained by Jaber Ramadhan and will be ridden by Sam Hitchott.

Mabrouk said that the bigger field was down to new owners, racing syndicates and two-year-old horses.

“It is a combination of a lot of things. We have a lot of new owners, we also have more two-yearold horses in the country. So, there is a good injection of horses and new racing syndicates. These syndicates have brought a lot of horses into the country and they are bringing more. Also, the carnival is on and you have a lot of international owners coming from outside. So, these are some of the reasons that you have more runners. And we hope to have more in other race courses as well,” said Mabrouk.

The first race starts at 1:45 p.m with the feature race taking place at 3.15 p.m. The meeting concludes with the last race at 4:45 p.m.