With the announcement last week that Sepoy and Helmet would be heading abroad for the Dubai World Cup meeting Peter Snowden is bracing for even more pain before the end of the year.

He said he was expecting a couple more horses to join the star pair on the plane to the Middle East but it now seems they will be gone even earlier.

As yet Snowden doesn’t know just which horses  will be plucked by Sheik Mohammed to join Godolphin but he does know they will be there for the start of the Dubai carnival in January.

The one name that has got out of the bag though is impressive four year old Scarf, his withdrawal from the Listed festival Stakes in Sydney confirming that thought.

Snowden won’t admit it though, even if he does acknowledge they’ve shelved plans for the Villiers Stakes on December 17.

“The races in Dubai start in January. There will be no big names, a horse like Scarf has been mentioned so he may go,” Snowden said.

As for the rest of them it will be a case of wait and see as he refused to give any hints at all.

“We’ve got a few more horses going early in January,” he said.

“Which ones we are not quite sure yet, they are going to let us know in the next couple of weeks which ones they will be.”

While insisting he doesn’t know which horses make up the team, he does know their purpose will be to pick up a few ratings races throughout the carnival before it ends on March 31.

This lot of runners will go straight under the guidance of Godolphin and Snowden will only travel across to oversee preparations for Sepoy and Helmet.

Scarf will leave Australia with an overall record of six wins from 13 starts including a black type conquest in the listed Winter Stakes at Rosehill during July.

Sepoy is due to run over 1200m in the Golden Shaheen on World Cup night while Helmet will contest the 1900m UAE Derby on the same card.