SHEIKH Mohammed is now in the delicious position of having to make a serious choice between his Derby candidates.

He holds the nap hand, and with it a stranglehold on the ante-post betting, thanks to his talented filly Cape Verdi. She is currently favourite for the Oaks and the Derby - though her price for the latter is quoted with a run - in itself, a unique position.

Her time in winning the One Thousand Guineas was faster than that taken by King Of Kings in the colts' equivalent. While, as Luca Cumani once said, ''Time only matters when you are in jail,'' there is no doubting her performance left her jockey Frankie Dettori almost stuck for words.

Godolphin, while quick not to commit the daughter of Caerleon, were equally quick not to rule out supplementing her. The entry deadline is May 30 and carries the hefty price-tag of #75,000. However, Sheikh Mohammed is hardly short of a camel or two, and the Derby is the one British classic still to elude him.

Cape Verdi's chance of lining up for the Derby seems to have strengthened after this week's Derby trials and the emergence of Bahr as a likely Oaks winner in her stablemate's absence. Until Guineas day, the main Godolphin hope was thought to have been City Honours, second behind Saratoga Springs in the Dante.

My bookmaker mole tells me that there were some serious bets on City Honours from someone ''extremely close to the Sheikh'', so any decision to supplement Cape Verdi would be a heavy pointer to her chances of winning.

Her former owner, Robert Sangster, sold her last year in a package with City Honours and two other two-year-olds. He has been very up-front in his encouragement for the boys in blue to let the filly take advantage of a 5lb allowance and take on the colts.

However, this is not just a case of one sportsman encouraging another. Sangster is also a businessman, and will have at least an eye on the value of the half-brother he owns, which could become stratospheric.

While criticised in places for selling the two-year-olds, Sangster's logic is irrefutable. Manton, his training establishment, costs around #7m a year to run, of which he cannot guarantee that any will be met by his returns, through prize-money, from racing.

Whereas the prestige of the British Classics remains far and above that of the European equivalents, the flip side, as far as Sangster is concerned, was illustrated on Sunday at Longchamp.

The owner supplemented his Victory Note for the Prix d'Essai de Poulains - the French 2000 Guineas - for the equivalent of #10,000. The colt scooped the race, his owner took the prize-money, as well as a breeders' prize of around #28,000, over seven times the bonus for the British equivalent.

If we are to expect our owners to keep their top home-breds racing in Britain, we should make it worth their while. To demand a vast hike in prize-money is not practical, but to follow the French and up the breeders' prizes might help bridge the gap.

French racing has been structured to give maximum encouragement to French owners running French-bred horses in France, and it is backing like this which will have played a part in the decision to keep the likes of Peintre Celebre in training.

The new chairman of the British Horseracing Board, Peter Savill, has made his views very clear over the shortfall in British prize-money; encouraging the grass-roots of breeding should be high on his agenda as well.

qWHILE the Sheikh mulls over his Derby plans, he is starting to look a trifle weak-handed when Aidan O'Brien's team is listed.

O'Brien has three leading Derby fancies, King Of Kings, Second Empire, and Saratoga Springs, owned by various combinations of Magniers, Tabors, and a dash of Lloyd-Webber.

While Second Empire is reportedly slow in recovering after a setback, either of the other two, if confirmed, could lay claim to the head of the market.

I cannot help but feel that O'Brien is rubbing his hands in glee, having form-lines through just about every runner in the Derby, including Cape Verdi, as his filly Shahtoush was runner-up at Newmarket.

If you can find a bookmaker in the land who will give you odds on the 28-year-old landing his second Classic of the season, pile on.

qWITH the news that Tim Forster is retiring at the end of the season, National Hunt racing will be losing one of its best loved names, and one of the last of the old-school trainers.

In a 36-year career, he trained over 1300 winners, including three Grand Nationals, with Well To Do, Ben Nevis, and Last Suspect, and enjoyed big-race success in recent years with Dublin Flyer and Martha's Son.

The Captain, as he is universally known, has been fighting multiple sclerosis and cancer, but has maintained his sense of humour as well as the pessimism for which he is so noted.

Forster, with his usual modesty, has said that he will be training a few point-to-pointers near his old yard close to Ludlow, which will be run by his assistant Henry Daly. Be prepared to see the familiar stamp of Forster steeplechasers - for him Flat racing is not real sport, and hurdling a necessary evil - lifting Festival races, albeit the Foxhunter versions.