Important Mission and Firnas swoop home for Salem bin Ghadayer double at Meydan

Important Mission wins Gharoud Sprint while Firnas takes Listed Entisar

Firnas, ridden by Xavier Ziani, wins the Listed Entisar run over the 2,000-metre distance at Meydan. Antonie Robertson / The National

Salem bin Ghadayer scooped the two Listed prizes at Meydan’s third meeting on Thursday.

Important Mission under Royston Ffrench had an almost impossible mission after missing the break but produced a scintillating late run to take the Gharhoud Sprint.

Xavier Ziani, on board Firnas, in contrast, made all the running to complete the double in the Listed Entisar run over the 2,000-metre distance.

Ffrench was left behind at the starting gate and then trailed the seven-runner field before swooping around a wall of horses for a convincing win from Satish Seemar pair Behavioral Bias and Bochart.

“He normally makes the running and when he stood in the gates I thought it was a pretty much lost cause,” Ffrench said.

“But racing behind I kept on asking him and he kept on finding and did well to win from that situation.

“They went very fast and my lad missed the break. The combination of both obviously made it difficult. My horse having the benefit of a run, paid dividends at the end.”

Ziani and Richard Mullen atop Seemar’s Saltarin Dubai were locked in a battle from start to finish but the former prevailed by half-a-length.

“He’s been a consistent horse and he was in this race because of his ability,” Bin Ghadayer said of Firnas.

“He’s shown improvement race after race. Impossible Mission likes to run in front and I was worried when he missed the break. When I look back at his history, he doesn’t like the kick-back. He showed his class and proved it on the night.”

Seemar and his stable jockey Mullen took the opening prize with Miller’s House, who appeared to have benefitted from his debut third on the track three weeks ago.

The Zabeel Stables trainer was denied of a back-to-back success when Adrie de Vries on Kanood got the better of his pair Bladesmith and Zero To A Hundred 35 minutes later to get Bahraini Fawzi Nass off the board for the season.

Ali Rashid Al Raihe also completed a double on the night. The Grandstand Stables trainer saddled the first two home in the third race before Zhou Storm made it two out-of-two by taking the concluding conditions prize.

Sandro Paiva on board Gervais got up in the last few strides to win from stable companion One Vision under Connor Beasley.

Beasley made all on Zhou Storm to win the final race on the card from another Seemar runner Shamran.