Bahri to lift Dunlop to the summit

RICHARD EDMONDSON

The Champion Stakes at Newmarket this afternoon is likely to provide the defining moment in this year's trainers' championship. If Bahri finishes in the first three, as he must surely do, then the man who prepares him, John Dunlop, will leapfrog Saeed Bin Suroor at the head of the table.

If he does not, then the championship question will be left open, as will another pertinent point, does Saeed Bin Suroor actually train the Godolphin horses and should it be his name in the record books?

When Simon Crisford, the Godolphin racing manager, is asked who prepares the Dubai-wintered squad he says it is a team effort in which Bin Suroor plays a strong role. Sheikh Mohammed himself gives a reply which suggests he has been comparing notes with Crisford. But when Jeremy Noseda, another member of the unit, is tackled there is mumbling and the shuffling of feet.

It is accepted, and vocalised, by everyone but the Godolphin management that Noseda, John Gosden's former assistant, is the key training figure. Bin Suroor, who replaced Hilal Ibrahim as Godolphin's trainer this year, may be more than a figurehead, but it is also true that he is a beneficiary of Sheikh Mohammed's insistence that Godolphin's named trainer is a Dubaian.

All this must irk Noseda as horses he has trained, and perhaps a championship, will go on to the scroll without his name appended to them. This may be why the Londoner is decamping to set up a yard in California after the Breeders' Cup.

It leaves the conundrum that if Noseda was so influential in this year's Godolphin batch, what will happen to the class of '96 who will be returned to these shores next season? Expect a new signing for the Emirates team in the coming weeks.

While staff may be needed, team Maktoum certainly does not need help in the thoroughbred division. Once again the boys dominate a Group One race in today's Champion, with Bahri and Tamure among the front-runners.

The latter has had just one horse finish ahead of him in five lifetime starts and that was a useful little thing called Lammtarra. Bahri has been something of a bounty hunter himself this season, tucking several scalps under his breast-girth, including, most notably, Ridgewood Pearl, at Ascot last time out. It may be instructive that the only beast to have beaten him twice this season, is a machine that has its cover zipped on at the moment, a horse called Celtic Swing.

Victory for Tamure would be satisfactory in one sense as it would provide a victory for Walter Swinburn substituting for Lanfranco Dettori, who decided not to appeal against a 10-day suspension yesterday. When the roles were reversed the Italian collected a King George and an Arc on Lammtarra. However, the speed of Bahri (next best 4.15) should prove decisive.

It is a measure of the Arabs' escalating domination that their one-time foe in the equine flesh markets, Robert Sangster, is now reduced to comparatively snuffling around for scraps. Sangster is doubly represented in the Cesarewitch, by Top Cees, who has used up more newsprint than the average budgie cage this season, and New Reputation.

The knives were out metaphorically for Top Cees after his controversial Chester Cup success in May and the steel has subsequently been produced all too tangibly for the five-year-old, who now goes to post a gelding.

His every move has been scrutinised by the bookmakers in the run-up to the race, which may have been a decoy move by Sangster. His other runner was third in the race last year and his trainer, Barry Hills, was also placed the previous season with Ritto. NEW REPUTATION (nap 3.00) should win.