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| Rowan Anderson |
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Charlie Appleby will have to wait for that first win at Jebel Ali after Sovereign Prince and Modern Dancer have failed to do so this campaign.
However when Jebel Ali hosted a seven race card on Sunday it was Bhupat Seemar seeing triples with three consecutive race wins.
The Zabeel Stables head trainer is now in hot pursuit of Trainer Championship leader Doug Watson with Seemar now only five wins under Watson.
Tadhg O’Shea partnered these rides in bagging four brace of wins in the saddle for himself. The classy individual performance from the Irish hoop pushes him further clear on the Jockey Championship, with him now eight wins in front of Antonio Fresu.
The first win for O’Shea came when winning the opening onboard Af Mutakafel in the Zero to Eighty Local Bred Arabian Cup Handicap for trainer Ernst Oertel.
The hoop would only have to wait ninety minutes before returning to the winners circle with Leading Spirit winning the Keeneland Trophy, race four, in front of the Costa and Overmeire partnered Bilhayl.
“He has always been talented but, obviously, he is getting older. That worked out perfectly as they went very fast in front which really suits him over this 1000m,” trainer Seemar said.
“That was a good performance under top weight and I knew I was going to have to be patient on him as there was always going to be plenty of early pace in the race,” O’Shea added.
Again thirty minutes later with the gelded son of Munnings, Southern Artist, winning the Future Champions Cup sponsored by Shadwell by 4.5 lengths.
Homebred by Fitri Hay he always appeared to be travelling strongly under the Champion Jockey and the pair put the race to bed, in a few strides, entering the final 200m.
The owner’s husband, Jim Hay was impressed with the performance as he said post-race.
“It is very exciting and extra special to have a homebred winner, especially in a feature race. he seemed to win easily so hopefully he can build on this.”
Race six would be the third case of dejavu with the Seemar trained Ghost of the Mambo winning the Al Sufouh Handicap trophy partnered with O’Shea.
The race results were great for the stable taking the first two past the posts with Yurman under Pat Cosgrove finishing 2.25 lengths behind his stablemate.