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Real World has been gelded and is likely to reappear on Super Saturday at Meydan, while Minella Indo and A Plus Tard will head straight to the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Saeed bin Suroor’s flagbearer, not seen since finishing a creditable second to Baaeed in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot, was suffering with a cough in the second half of last summer and never made it back to the track, having also finished second to Baaeed in the Lockinge at Newbury.
After two failed attempts on dirt in last year’s Saudi Cup and Dubai World Cup, that experiment has been put on the back burner and he will race exclusively on turf from now on.
“Real World we know is a very smart horse, but sometimes when he went racing he wasn’t always thinking about it completely,” said Bin Suroor.
“In the mornings at home he was fine, but only when he got to the races did he start to get excited, sweating very badly and was coltish. He still ran well, but we made the decision to geld him in the summer.
“He was coughing a lot in the summer, that was why he hasn’t run since Ascot. It took him a long time to get over it, he had a lot of mucus. We just couldn’t run him.”
He went on: “Hopefully he’s over it now. It was frustrating, we had such a good horse and couldn’t run him. But you can’t run them when they aren’t healthy.
“He’s doing well so far in Dubai, in full training, but I want to find a race for him on Super Saturday, maybe the Jebel Hatta.
“We’ll keep him on the turf this year. We gave him a chance on the dirt but he didn’t handle it well, so that’s it. We’ll keep him to turf.”
In other news, both Minella Indo and A Plus Tard will head straight to the Cheltenham Gold Cup for trainer Henry de Bromhead.
Each horse is a winner of the race in his own right, with Minella Indo landing the Grade One contest in 2021 ahead of his stablemate before they finished in the reverse order the following season.
A Plus Tard was pulled up on his seasonal debut in the Betfair Chase in November, while a planned run in the Savills Chase at Leopardstown was scuppered by a late mishap.
The gelding is fully recovered now, however, and will make his next start with a Gold Cup title defence in March.
“He seems good. We gave him a full check over and everything seems fine, his joint is good again. It was just a bang,” De Bromhead said.
“We are sort of starting afresh and aiming for March.
“I think we go straight there, we’ve sort of made that decision now and that’s it.
“He needs to go left-handed and the Irish Gold Cup was our only option really. We’re well able to get him spot on for the day and we’ll just aim for that.”
Minella Indo made a winning start to his campaign at Tramore on New Year’s Day, winning a Grade Three event by a neck from Willie Mullins’ Stattler.
He too will take a direct route to Cheltenham now.
“He seems great, I’m delighted with him. He’s in really good form and we’ll go straight to the Gold Cup with him,” said De Bromhead.
“I was delighted to see him back and everyone saw the reception he got, and we got. It was incredible. It was an emotional day, a really good day.”