DEL MAR, CA - NOVEMBER 01: Forever Young, left, ridden by Ryusei Sakai, wins the Longines Breeders' Cup Classic during the 42nd Breeders' Cup Thoroughbred World Championships on November 1, 2025, at Del Mar Racetrack in Del Mar, CA. (Photo by Karl Anderson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)Icon Sportswire via Getty ImagesThe complex web of human tragedy and global financial and logistical challenges spun up by the war in the month since the outbreak of hostilities on February 28 have not stopped the Dubai Racing Club and the Meydan from forging ahead this weekend with their $30.5 million series of races, the lodestone of which is Saturday’s $12-million Dubai World Cup. The March 25 post position draw at the Meydan only confirmed the resolve. Hewing to the Middle Eastern habit of staging the feature races in the evening, post time is at 12:45 p.m. EDT/8:45 p.m. Dubai. The race is run at 2000 meters, an habitual distance for the Gulf tracks, which constitutes one full (two-turn) revolution of the Meydan, and that clocks in just a few yards under the Kentucky Derby distance of a mile-and-a-quarter. Precisely, the Dubai Cup is run at 1.242 miles, or 14.8 yards shorter than the Derby. Suffice it to say, Forever Young has that distance in him and then some. Note: As in the Saudi Cup, the Meydan saddle-cloth/program number of the horse does not — repeat, does not — reflect his post position. We order the field here according to post position, with the Meydan’s saddle-cloth/program number in parentheses. We will update the odds as the weekend progresses toward post time.Here’s the refresher on the field:Post Position, (Saddle Cloth/Program Number), Horse, Jockey, Trainer, London Odds1.(2) Magnitude, Jose Ortiz, Steve Asmussen, 7-12.(4) Meydaan, William Buick, Simon and Ed Crisford, 7-13.(7) Walk of Stars, Mickael Barzalona, Bhupat Seemar, 40-14.(8) Heart of Honor, Saffie Osborne, Jamie Osborne, 50-15.(3) Hit Show, Florent Geroux, Brad Cox, 10-16.(1) Forever Young, Ryusei Sakai, Yoshito Yahagi, 2-57.(5 ) Imperial Emperor, Tadhg O’Shea, Bhupat Seemar, 8-18.(9) Tap Leader, Pat Dobbs, Doug Watson, 50-19.(6) Tumbarumba, James Doyle, Hamal Al Jehani, 16-1As per habit and favor among many Japanese owners and trainers at this still springlike time of year in the Gulf, top favorite Forever Young and his connections have been aiming for the Dubai Cup since, arguably, well before they won their second, decisive Saudi Cup at King Abdulaziz on Valentine’s Day. They prefer to stick out at least this chunk of the war at the Meydan. By all accounts, Forever Young has looked in fine fettle over the last six weeks. One of this earth’s most successful, durable, and athletic colts at a stratospheric $29-million-plus in earnings (and counting), the six-year-old Forever Young is viewed by more than a few close observers as more or less a sure thing Saturday evening. Of course, since this is horse racing, sure things — Secretariat, for instance — are made to be challenged, and occasionally even bested. It may sound trite, but there is an ancient stone bulwark of soaring accomplishment under the cliche: Challenge is the essence of the sport. But in the present case, compared to the 2026 Dubai Cup’s overwhelming favorite, the eight other contenders who make up the field are, to a man, far less endowed with tactical ability, experience, appetite for victory, and in earnings against the best international competition. Another way to put this would be to say, the players will be somewhat disheartened by that fact. Which is arguably why, in London — which are the odds to watch since so many British jockeys, trainers, and breeders work in the Middle East — Forever Young carries 2/5 odds at this writing, or an eye-watering implied probability of winning of 71%. In the eyes of those take-no-prisoners London bookies, his two nearest competitors are: Meydaan and the American hopeful Magnitude, trained by Steve Asmussen, who both carry odds of 7/1, with an implied probability of a bare 12.5%. The point is that that 58.5% drop from first to the second-favorite is vertiginous, to put it diplomatically. Put more bluntly, you’ll have more pure fun handicapping the place and show horses than you will the victor. The only horse in the field to have beaten Forever Young is the only other U.S. runner in the pack, the Brad Cox-trained Hit Show, who beat Forever Young exactly a year ago in the Dubai Cup’s 29th running. It will remain a deeply entertaining irony of this race that Hit Show is considered a close contender at all. It’s fair to say that, in last year’s running of the Cup, Hit Show went off as an extreme long shot at 41-1 and more or less survived the contest rather than triumphed. Trainer Cox has acknowledged as much, without stating it directly, that his colt will need the race to unfold in a very specific way to best Forever Young. Specifically, some arrangement of the field will have to complicate the trip for Forever Young in order to allow Hit Show the chance to assemble his lesser talents to mop up the pieces at the line. Certainly, at this point in the tumultuous history of the Middle East, staging the weekend is an exercise demanding more than a little derring-do, a number of rounds and/or debris from their interception having peppered (but not permanently closed) Dubai International over the last weeks, some 14 miles north of the track. Sixteen miles west-southwest of the track, the luxe Fairmont The Palm Hotel on Palm Jumeirah took a random debris hit and sustained minor damage on the first day of Iran’s counterattack on its neighbors, February 28, as did the Burj al’ Arab hotel on its island a day later. Arguably the best way to characterize Dubai’s stance in the face of the war is resolute. Business as usual. Resolutely, then, the Dubai World Cup weekend goes forward.