Nakheel ruled out of Guineas

Nakheel has been ruled out of the Stan James 2000 Guineas after being found to have suffered a stress fracture of his pelvis.

The Sadler’s Wells colt had been on the easy list since failing to sparkle in a piece of work at trainer Mark Johnston’s Middleham base just over a week ago.

Johnston reported Nakheel to be “stiff and sore” after that exercise, forcing him to scrap plans for a racecourse gallop at the Craven meeting, and subsequently sent the Hamdan Al Maktoum-owned three-year-old for a bone scan, which revealed the problem.

“He has a stress fractures in his pelvis,” the handler told PA Sport. “We are still waiting for the final reports on the injury and he has gone back to Newmarket for those tests.

“The Guineas is definitely out and I would think it’s probably going to be the second half of the season before he is back.

“We will make a final statement on that at the beginning of next week.”

Nakheel won both of his starts last term and had been as short as 10-1 with totesport for the Newmarket Classic on May 6.

Richard Hills, first jockey to Nakheel’s owner, was disappointed to hear of the colt’s setback.

“It’s a big blow because I think he’s horse that had a massive future,” said Hills. “I spoke to Mark the other day and he suspected something like that had happened.

“It’s a shame but let’s hope we can find another horse to replace him. Hopefully he will recover and we can win plenty of races with him.

“Mark was very keen on him. He’d been doing a lot of work with him over the winter and we had been dreaming but that’s racing,” he told Racing UK.