While connections of Sacred Kingdom appeared to have publicly forsaken ideas of racing in Dubai on World Cup night in March, they will no doubt be keeping an ear out as the Dubai International Racing carnival begins next week.
With the new Meydan track scheduled to host its first race meeting next Thursday, many around the world will be looking to see how the Tapeta surface plays out.
Sacred Kingdom's people have taken the view that the Alquoz Sprint on the main turf track at Meydan is not an appropriate target as it is a Group Three contest.
That is not exactly Dubai's fault - newly introduced races cannot claim a Group One status in their first year, no matter how many millions they put up in stakemoney.
In all likelihood, the race will be at least a Group Two in 2011 and certainly a Group One the following year. If anything, Sacred Kingdom's presence in the race would only serve to hasten that advancement, although clearly that is not a driver for trainer Ricky Yiu Poon-fai and owner Sin Kang-yuk.
On the other hand, the established Group One Golden Shaheen wasn't attractive to Sacred Kingdom's handlers because it is not on turf but on the new Tapeta surface.
Created and developed by a former top-class English trainer, Michael Dickinson, Tapeta is a wax-coated mix of sand, rubber and fibre, that is described by its marketers as 'impervious to weather and never turns to mud, and is the only system on the market today that has been tested over time to hold up under varied and severe weather conditions'.