SILVER CHARM
Courtesy of Dubai Racing Club
1998 - SILVER CHARM
By 1998 the Dubai World Cup had earned Group One status and there was another outstanding winner when Silver Charm, the 1997 Kentucky Derby and Preakness hero, was ridden by Gary Stevens to hold off Godolphin's Swain and Mick Kinane by a short head.
The form was beyond question as Swain had landed back-to-back King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes at Ascot while the other beaten horses included such stars as Loup Sauvage from France (third), Behrens from the US (fifth), Japanese raider Kyoto City (sixth) and German filly Borgia (eighth).
Winning trainer Bob Baffert was typically exuberant after victory for Bob and Beverley Lewis's four-year-old. He enthused: "In the last 100 yards he was all heart. That's what Silver Charm is all about. He has so much courage, he makes up for my training. This horse has been so good to me."
Bob Lewis added: "Believe me, with this type of exhilaration, you realize that you have strength that you really don't think was possible. I could have stood there holding that magnificent trophy all night long."
"If you are unable to admire this then you do not like horse racing," wrote the Racing Post's Nicholas Godfrey. "Greatness is as greatness does, so they say. Silver Charm does just enough - but in Saturday's Dubai World Cup, that meant producing one of the most courageous efforts in living memory to secure the most thrilling of contests from the King George winner Swain by a short head.
"The winner is a byword for tenacity in America, where he is arguably the most popular horse in training."
Alastair Down wrote in The Sporting Life: "First Cigar, then Singspiel, and now Silver Charm. If there is another Group One race in the world that can boast winners of such quality over the last three years then I must have missed it."
Deidre B Biles of The Blood-Horse commented: "The golden trophy for the Dubai World Cup stands nearly 30 inches tall and weighs more than a bowling ball. But using only one hand, Robert Lewis thrust the glittering award high into the night-time sky as he acknowledged the cheers of thousands of racing fans who were packed into Nad Al Sheba Racecourse on March 28."
Previous Winners
Click on the horse names below to read about previous winners.