Alice Haynes relishing Arlington Million Challenge with Cairo

Alice Haynes shares an exclusive blog with Coral, with her runner Cairo taking part in Saturday's Arlington Million Challenge at Colonial Downs.

• Cairo - Colonial Downs - 10:54pm BST race odds

I arrived at Colonial Downs on Tuesday, and the early indications are they cannot do enough for us here, they have opened up the turf track for us to give Cairo a canter, and it looks to be a great surface.  The horse himself left England last Wednesday, arrived in New York on Thursday, and after two days in quarantine, was boxed down to Virginia, an eight hour journey.

He's an old pro now when it comes to travelling, so he’s taken it all in his stride, and acclimatised well.  The temperature is cooler than it was here last week apparently, so while it’s still warm, it’s more comfortable for him now.  He had a couple of canters on the dirt when he first got here, and his latest work has been on the turf as I say, under his big race pilot Ben Curtis.

Ben actually contacted us when he saw we were running the horse over here, and I think he will be a really good fit for the horse.  He's obviously got plenty of experience riding European horses, but he's been in America long enough now to have the local knowledge as well, which I think could be really important in a race like this.