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Michael Rodd’s warm-up ride in the US$1 million Group 2 Godolphin Mile (1600m) turned out to be more of an early mud bath than anything else for the Kanji-based Australian jockey.

Rodd’s main assignment at the Dubai World Cup meeting is the ride on Singapore Horse of the Year Debt Collector in the US$6 million Group 1 Dubai Turf (1800m) 3 ¾ hours later. As a bonus, he picked up the ride on the South Korean horse Triple Nine in the opening event on the nine-race programme to the world’s richest single raceday.

Unfortunately, the five-year-old entire trained by Busan’s champion trainer Kim Young Kwan never travelled over a surface he was supposed to be at home over – dirt.

But after the track had been copiously watered by the persistent showers over Dubai in the last 48 hours, most of the 13 gallopers in the Mile were at the receiving end of a generous amount of kickback throughout the 1600m journey.

Triple Nine was the first to feel the brunt of it as he faded out of contention form the half-mile and had already tailed off badly by the home turn.

Realising he was the first beaten horse, Rodd had already stopped riding while upfront, American contender Sharp Azteca (Edgard Zayas) was paddling away like he worse flippers as he hit the front after making a move three wide coming to the home turn.

Sharp Azteca opened up to a three-length break and looked home and hosed, but it turned out Zayas’ decision to draw first blood at the top of the straight was a little premature.

One furlong from home, he started to shorten up, and it was clear the two chasers looming up behind would gobble him up as they collared him on either flank – Second Summer (Patrick Dobbs) on the rails and Ross (Andreas Atzeni) on the outside.

As the pair swept past, it was the Doug Watson-trained Second Summer on the inside who showed a little more bite as he went on to prevail by a neck from Ross with Sharp Azteca holding on for third place, another three-quarter length away.

Surprisingly, the timing of 1min 35.62secs for the mile was only 0.41 second outside the course record established by One Man Band (also trained by Watson) incidentally in last year’s Godolphin Mile, which defied the state of the bog track out there, and is a testament to the wonderful job done by the people on the ground.

Triple Nine did not run last as he managed to run on late to finish ahead of two runners. For Rodd, he was – like all the other 12 sand-splattered jockeys – off to the showers, luckily not an early one, as he takes a break before getting ready for Debt Collector six races later.

“He’s a nice class horse, he’s a Group 2 horse in California. Everything’s worked well,” said Watson who is no stranger to Singapore having sent the likes of Limario, Meandre and Dux Scholar to the Singapore International races in 2013 and 2014, albeit without success.

“I’ve never seen the track in that kind of condition before, but I have to stay the ground staff has done a fantastic job to get the track to that point as we had a lot of rain.”