Dawn flies home in Guineas trial

Fly At Dawn earned his place in the UAE 2000 Guineas with a smooth victory for trainer Charlie Appleby and jockey Mickael Barzalona in the seven-furlong dirt trial at Meydan on Thursday, January 26. 

Runner-up to stable companion Van Der Decken over the same course and distance on December 29, the three-year-old Discreet Cat colt was bumped coming out of the stalls and raced towards the rear of the 14 runners.

Fly At Dawn started to take closer order with half a mile to race and went mid-division on the inside turning in.

Front-running Cosmo Charlie tried to slip the field but Fly At Dawn took second two furlongs out and reeled in the leader with a 110 yards to race.

The winner ran on well to score by a length from Cosmo Charlie in 1m 24.48s, the pair clear of three other Godolphin runners, Top Score (Saeed bin Suroor/Adrie de Vries) third, Best Solution (Saeed bin Suroor/Andrea Atzeni) fourth and Van Der Decken (Charlie Appleby/Dane O’Neill) fifth.

Charlie Appleby explained: “The plan this evening was to go forward with Fly At Dawn but Mickael got squeezed out of it between a couple of bigger horses.

“Full credit to the horse and to Mickael, who got close enough to the pace that he wasn’t getting too much kickback, which is a key thing around here.

“Fly At Dawn has got natural pace and he can travel. I was pleased to see him gallop out as strongly as he did today.

“We applied a tongue-tie tonight and that has allowed him to get his breathing right and his head down in the right position on this dirt.

“He is a very game horse and I was pleased to get the run into him last month because experience on this surface is such an asset.”

Mickael Barzalona said: “We knew that Fly At Dawn was improving a lot since his last run and he is a lovely horse.

“When I found room, he went very well to the line. The leader brought me through to the last furlong and everything went in the right way for my horse.

“Hopefully, he will keep improving and run a good race again in the Guineas (G3, dirt, Meydan, 1m, February 11).”

Fly At Dawn was the second leg of a treble for Charlie Appleby on January 26.