"The most successful Carnival trainer, bin Suroor is seeking his 100th winner at the annual racing extravaganza, while South African De Kock, second to bin Suroor in the Carnival statistics, is on 99 UAE winners. It will be a major surprise if at least one does not bring up their century."

"The richest horse race in history was staged in Dubai earlier today, and it was a $10 million advertisement for how synthetic surfaces can make a complete mess of so-called world-class championship racing. For all that it proved about the quality of the contestants either individually or as a group, the results of the Dubai World Cup might as well have been drawn out of a hat."

"Crist's contention the World Cup outcome was a 'crapshoot' is ludicrous on its face. The top three finishers in the race had been separated by one and one-quarter lengths in the primary prep for the race, the March 4 Maktoum Challenge, over the same Meydan course at the same distance as the World Cup. Fourth-place finisher Gio Ponti was about one and one-quarter lengths behind the World Cup winner, a similar margin to his one length loss to Zenyatta in the Breeders' Cup Classic." Re: http://cristblog.drf.com/crist/2010/03/dubai-world-crapshoot.html

"I wonder whether, after this spectacular World Cup, the true tradition of horse racing in Dubai -- the family tradition -- will endure."

Of the 38 races run over Meydan's Tapeta track, only three have been won by front-runners. "Four have been taken by horses pressing the pace or tracking the leader, with nine taken by trackers in third, fourth or fifth. Winners coming from mid-pack in fields of at least 10 horses number 15, while seven have come from at or near the back of the pack. So 58 percent of this season's Meydan synthetic winners - 22 of 38 - have been closers." Quite different from what one jockey expected prior to Meydan's opening: "Horses coming up from behind will find it very difficult so it’s going to suit horses that like racing up in the first five." (From: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100114/SPORT/701139915/1004/sport)

"Dubai remains ideally placed as the potential nexus of a maturing international sport. Certainly there will be a far greater geographical spread of competition than at the Breeders' Cup, which bills itself as the World Thoroughbred Championships.... [At Santa Anita] there is now distressing talk of the synthetic track being restored to dirt. One conceivable reward for this shocking regression might be a permanent contract to stage the Breeders' Cup. If that were so, the painful but necessary catharsis currently underway in the American sport would be disastrously reversed by its reactionaries. And their inevitable isolation would provide an obvious cue for Meydan."

"The next step has always been obvious: a festival meeting at the other end of the season. The question is whether the Sheikh still has the energy, the clout and, for that matter, the money to make it happen. Were it not for the unfortunate matter of the entire country nearly going bust a few months ago, the timing would seem ideal. The Breeders' Cup awarded itself the subtitle 'World Thoroughbred Championships' several years ago, but it will be back on dirt this year after two years on an artificial surface. Now that even Santa Anita is apparently ready to reinstall dirt too, American racing seems more inward-looking than ever."