Those who know him well say that he lives up to his name in every possible way from

Those who know him well say that he lives up to his name in every possible way, from his dappled steely coat to his polite, laid-back character. But Cigar and Singspiel will still be hard acts to follow.Silver Charm's trainer, Bob Baffert, arrived in Dubai at dawn yesterday and within half an hour of touching down was trackside at Nad El Sheba to see his pride and joy canter a steady lap of the course under his work- rider, Pepe Argon. The four-year-old Silver Buck colt, who has bloomed in the Dubai sunshine, will step up a gear this morning.Baffert, 45, a former history teacher, was brought up on his parents' horse and cattle ranch in Nogales, southern Arizona and has not previously been out of the States. Like his rather better-known colleague D Wayne Lukas he cut his teeth on quarter-horse racing, first at local county fairs and later the top Californian tracks, and conspicuous success with the two-furlong flyers prompted backing for a move to thoroughbreds 10 years ago. In 1992 his Thirty Slews won the Breeders' Cup Sprint at Gulfstream and Baffert has not looked back.In 1996 his first Kentucky Derby runner, Cavonnier, was beaten a few inches; Silver Charm was his second. The first prize for that contest was pounds 6,700; next weekend's winner will earn nearly pounds 1.5m. It took Omaha seven days to cross the Atlantic, in the liner Aquitania; Silver Charm flew to Dubai in 18 hours. The big, handsome grey came agonisingly close to becoming America's 12th Triple Crown winner (Omaha was the third) when, after taking the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes by a pair of whiskers, he was a three-quarter- length runner-up to Touch Gold in the Belmont Stakes.He comes to the World Cup on the back of two victories this year and has given the race the star quality it needs to maintain its credibility as a top-level international contest.

His presence in the field for the world's richest horse-race makes him only the second Kentucky Derby winner in history to venture outside North America for competition, the first being Omaha 64 years ago. The 1935 Triple Crown hero came to England as a four-year-old to tackle the top staying events and went down by a short head, after a titanic battle, to the Oaks winner Quashed in the Ascot Gold Cup. SILVER CHARM, warm favourite for Saturday's third running of the Dubai World Cup, is following in famous - but extremely rare - hoofprints. But old habits die hard in jump racing and a whole community still has to be fed If it's Friday, it must be Folkestone One day less to the 1999 Cheltenham Festival.. Defeat by a fingernail, above all, would rankle with the ever-competitive Dunwoody.An afternoon later, the emotional debris of the Cheltenham weighing-room littered the rather less salubrious surroundings of Folkestone. A desultory crowd, some moderate racing and a few horses ridden from memory "Back to normality," Dunwoody muttered.

"What else would I have done today?" Probably not driven 250 miles to ride Lucy Tufty in the Sandgate Mares Only Claiming Hurdle (first prize pounds 1,857.80), if he had thought about it. McCoy's Champleve and Dunwoody's Hill Society pitched champion and former champion together in a pumping iron finish. Then I clouted the third last." The sub-plots were hardly less compelling: French Ballerina, French Holly and Florida Pearl lacerated classy fields in the style of true champions. Defeat is acceptable; not knowing is unbearable, fertile ground for conspiracy theories.Through three days of raucous achievement and despair, battle was waged up and down Prestbury Park's hill and along the rows of bookmakers pitches.

Day One to Istabraq and the Irish; Day Two to that sentimental favourite One Man; Day Three, the decider, came down to Dunwoody and Dorans Pride "I thought I had everyone covered," Dunwoody recalled. "Then Norman [Williamson on Strong Promise] swept by and I thought, `Christ, I hope he doesn't get the trip'. Viewed in those terms, Nicholls' anger, fuelled by Pipe's infuriating indifference, was not so much understandable as inevitable. His competitive instinct brought him few friends in the saddle, but has made him a formidable challenger to the top rank of trainers. Backed by Barber, Nicholls has graduated from apprentice to master with remarkable speed, but See More Business was the wonder horse they had been waiting for.

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