Dubai World Cup cancelled due to coronavirus

This year’s meeting had been set to take place behind closed doors at Meydan Racecourse on March 28 but organisers have now decided to cancel the event in order to “safeguard the health of all participants”.

Chairman of the board of Meydan Group LLC Saeed Al Tayer said: “Due to the ongoing global health implications of the coronavirus and precautionary measures being implement by the UAE government, the organising committee regrets to announce the cancellation of the Dubai World Cup 2020 meeting at Meydan Racecourse on Saturday, March 28.”

Newmarket trainer Charlie Fellowes has questioned the timing of the announcement.

Fellowes sent Prince Of Arran to the UAE on Friday and he now fears he may struggle to get last year’s Melbourne Cup runner-up and his staff back home due to global travel restrictions.

“It’s incredibly frustrating that Prince Of Arran is now stuck out in Dubai as we’d been asking over and over again if this meeting was going to go ahead and were assured that it was,” he told the Racing Post.

“Now the problem is getting the horse and Kelly [Cochrane], the girl that is with him, back here which might not be easy.

“If we’d had an inkling that this was going to happen we wouldn’t have sent the horse with the other Europeans on Friday. Quite why they left it this late to call it off I don’t know but the decision obviously transcends racing.”

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