Heart Of Honor has Osborne dreaming of UAE Guineas glory

Jamie Osborne’s Heart Of Honor has the UAE 2000 Guineas in his sights after two impressive dirt victories at Meydan.

The colt is by freshman American sire Honor A.P. out of a Scat Daddy mare named Ruby Love, bestowing him with a pedigree that would suggest he is made to thrive on the dirt.

After a debut run at Southwell in October, where he was second over seven furlongs, Heart Of Honor flew out to the Middle East to find the surface on which he is bred to perform.

His first encounter with dirt came in a one-mile conditions race, where he was a ready winner when coming home four and a half lengths ahead of Simon and Ed Crisford’s Estmrar.

He returned for the Dubai Maritime City over the same course and distance last week and went on to win again, scoring by two and a half lengths having travelled well throughout under Adrie de Vries.

After acquitting himself well in those two starts, Heart Of Honor is to be aimed next at the UAE 2000 Guineas, a Group Three event run at Meydan later in the month that is likely to be his last start over a mile.

“The plan is to go to the UAE 2000 Guineas with him, he appears to have come out of Friday’s race OK and as long as he’s alright between now and then, we’ll take our chance,” said Osborne.

“It was a finely balanced decision (to run on Friday). If we don’t win the 2000 Guineas, then some may say it is because we ran him two weeks before, but if we didn’t run, then some also might say it’s because we didn’t give him enough experience.

“We made the decision anyway, and I think he’ll cope with it.

“He’s got a good mind and he’s a very sound horse who has taken well to dirt. I do think that this will probably be his last start at a mile, I think he can improve again for another furlong or two in front of him.

“Win, lose or draw the Guineas, I’d imagine we’d be heading to the Al Bastakiya as a trial for the UAE Derby.”

The UAE Derby was part of a memorable campaign enjoyed by Osborne’s former stable star Toast Of New York, who won the race in 2014 before taking to the dirt in America to miss out by the slimmest of margins to Bayern in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Naturally, comparisons are likely to be drawn between the two, but at this early stage, Osborne is focused on Heart Of Honor’s Dubai campaign and will turn his attentions to further plans after his time in the desert.

“I’d rule nothing in and nothing out at the moment,” he said.

“If we get that far and end up in the Derby, that will have been a fairly intense period for him as a young horse, so we’ll just take a breath, take stock and then have a think about what we do next.”