Epsom, England // With the mercury hitting 40°C in the UAE this week, wet weather would be the last thing on anybody’s mind, but persistent rain in Britain threatens to scupper Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid’s twin-pronged attack on next week’s English Oaks.
The UAE’s Minister of Finance has an iron grip on the British Classic. Taghrooda and Tarfasha, who are widely considered the two most-likely winners, are currently in the hunt to deliver their owner a third victory in the Group 1 event, staged over 2,400 metres at this most idiosyncratic of racecourses.
Taghrooda warmed up for next Saturday’s task by undergoing a casual canter with a lead horse yesterday under Paul Hanagan, her likely jockey, along the cambers of the undulating horseshoe layout.
Tarfasha remained in Ireland, however, at Dermot Weld’s Kildare base, and the globe-trotting trainer was clear that if the damp conditions persist over the next week, his filly would be saved for another day.
“We are very happy with her at the moment, but she is a very fluent-moving filly and likes top of the ground,” Weld said by teleconference. “If the ground was good to yielding, we would be very happy. If it was softer, we wouldn’t go.”
The Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot next month, which Weld has won twice, or the Irish Oaks at the Curragh in July, are the two most-likely targets should Tarfasha be pulled. Weld stated that the final decision lay with Sheikh Hamdan.
Spitting rain was falling across London last night, and Andrew Cooper, the clerk of the course at Epsom, tried his best to put a positive spin on Britain’s notoriously lousy weather.
“Next week has an unsettled look to it, but there should not be heavy volumes of rain or thunderstorms,” he said. “Nothing compares to here in terms of draining. You can easily move a whole going point in a day. If you have two dry days, you can move from soft to the slow side of good.
“Eight days from the start of the Investec Festival, I would not rule anything out.”
Should Tarfasha be scratched, Taghrooda has shown enough promise in just two runs to suggest she could easily have enough ability to follow in the hoofprints of Eswarah in 2005 and Salsabil 15 years earlier.
Eswarah had raced only twice, and had won only at Listed level, also, before she showed a blistering turn of foot and the mental fortitude to win the Oaks.
Taghrooda is equally inexperienced and it was her natural athleticism that put to the sword five rivals in a Listed race at Newmarket last month.
Those behind her subsequently have run poorly and trainer John Gosden is certainly not getting carried away despite his charge appearing to prove yesterday that she could handle Epsom.
“She is a very nice filly, but quite correctly, people have questioned the form,” Gosden said. “If you win by six lengths, though, it is not your fault that others don’t go on.
“She handled the track well. Paul Hanagan was very pleased with her. She did a half-speed piece. I wouldn’t call it work. It was more to just come and see the place.”
The Oaks will be run this year in memory of Sir Henry Cecil, Frankel’s trainer, who died last year of cancer.
The race, first run in 1779, is also set to feature Ihtimal, the dual UAE Classic winner of Godolphin’s Saeed bin Suroor, who will be ridden by a resurgent Keiren Fallon.
sports@thenational.ae