NEWS
Time discrepancies reported on Dubai World Cup card
Posted: Thursday, April 03, 2008 4:00 PM
The Emirates Racing Association is conducting an inquiry into the times of the six Thoroughbred races on the Dubai World Cup program.
The Racing Post first noticed discrepancies when their own timing experts found that each of the official final times for all of the races after the Etisalat Godolphin Mile (UAE-G2) seemed to be off by almost one second.
Emirates Racing Association steward and racing administrator Gerard Bush told Racing Post on Tuesday that sectional times for each of the six races had been removed from the Dubai World Cup website and that officials were looking into the final times for each of the races.
Dubai Racing Club Chief Executive Officer Frank Gabriel was traveling abroad on Thursday and not available for comment.
According to the official times on World Cup night, Jay Peg, winner of the $5-million Dubai Duty Free, covered 1,777 meters on the turf in 1:46.20, eclipsing the track record of 1:46.48 run by Wolf Whistle in January 2005.
Curlin’s final time of 2:00.15 for 2,000 meters (9.94 furlongs) would have been the third-fastest for the world’s most lucrative Thoroughbred race, just behind 2000 winner Dubai Millennium and ’07 winner Invasor (Arg).
Bush told Racing Post that the sectional times for the Thoroughbred races appeared to be wrong and that officials were looking into the final times as well for clarification purposes.
