Sakhee and Light give Godolphin best chance

In most years the Breeders' Cup is just another sporting event, significant to few yet ignored by the many, but this fall is different.

When horseracing's supposed Olympics is staged at Belmont Park in New York a week on Saturday it will be the first international sporting event in the area since the atrocities of 11 September. There are sombre overtones leading up to the great day, but also adrenaline-pumping moments to anticipate.

Travel restrictions within the United States mean that organisers accept that an early expectation of a 55,000 crowd figure will not be fulfilled. Still an audience of 45,000 is anticipated and the numbers on the ground will nearly reach the original guess when the security teams are included. There will be no coolers or large objects allowed on the premises on Saturday week. But there will be plentiful searches. "You won't be surprised to learn that we have given quite a bit of thought to security measures," DG Van Clief jnr, the President of Breeders' Cup Ltd, said yesterday.

Introspection or consideration of other victims of the present violence are not immediately available at this moment on the east coast. Breeders' Cup XVIII will be all about the survival instincts of New Yorkers. "There is a great deal of patriotism, a great deal of determination, to get back to life in this part of the country," Van Clief added. "I think we will see the enthusiastic racegoer turn up in significant numbers.

"This year's event will inevitably be overshadowed by the tragic events that took place here in New York and Washington DC on 11 September. With that in mind, the Breeders' Cup championships this year become something more than they have been in the past. This event takes on a greater meaning. We hope this is a building block here in New York going forward to the future."

It will almost be a relief when the horses actually get out on to the track. There will be a maximum of 20 European runners on the card worth over $14m across eight races. They look the tastiest for some time. "The European runners stand out not so much for numbers as quality," Van Clief said. "We have had some extremely talented runners from Europe in recent years but this group stands above."

The good horses are supplied by the usual suspects. Ballydoyle and Coolmore look strong, Godolphin even more potent. "This is our best chance ever," Simon Crisford, the racing manager to the Dubai team, said yesterday. "We are going with a solid team, but it would be unwise to underestimate the home opposition.

"We have had very good horses like Mark Of Esteem, Swain and Halling beaten at the meeting. Halling is a good example. When he was running against inferior opposition on the sand in Dubai, he got on an easy lead and absolutely murdered them. But when we put him in a race against the very good horses under American conditions then he couldn't handle the surface at all.

"The most important factor about Fantastic Light is that he has had two winters training on a sand surface every day. He has never given us any indication that he wouldn't be able to switch from turf to dirt."

Fantastic Light and Sakhee are doubly entered in the Turf and Classic and only around the Belmont barns next Wednesday morning will we know the exact arrangements. By then we will also have an idea if Galileo too has adapted to an alien surface. "We were very happy with him," Aidan O"Brien said yesterday when asked about the dual Derby winner's routine training spin around Southwell recently." He has this lovely low action and I don"t think the artificial surface will be a problem, though you never know until you try."