The Godolphin stable has made its mark everywhere except America. Saturday could change all that, writes Jamie Reid
Louisville, Kentucky, spends most of the year looking and feeling like a prosperous but dull provincial town. But on Monday, the old riverboat landing on the banks of the Ohio became the sporting, hustling and gambling capital of the United States.
On Saturday afternoon, at approximately 5.30pm, the famous old Churchill Downs racetrack with its massive, twin-spired grandstand will stage the 124th Kentucky Derby, a searing test for three-year-olds only, over 2km of hard, packed dirt. The derby is the first and greatest leg of the US Triple Crown but it is also a national institution: the one moment in the sporting calendar when America catches its breath and opens its heart to horse racing.
As the derby runners parade on the track, the University of Louisville marching band will strike up the opening chords of My Old Kentucky Home and more than 100 000 hyped- up spectators will join in: the railbirds and college kids packed into the teeming infield; the hotshots and swells lining the private boxes and the balcony tables of the Eclipse Restaurant and the Sky Lounge.
The singing of the derby anthem is a proud and emotional moment and strong men and women, many no doubt quite ruthless in their private and commercial lives, have been known to weep. Theirs is an intense and proprietorial attachment to the Derby in the Blue Grass, and they expect, with good reason, that whatever the fate of their own wager, a resoundingly American- owned and American-trained thoroughbred will prevail. This year, however, they could be in for a surprise.
The Venezuelan-owned Canonero, the shock winner back in 1971, is the only non-US or Canadian-trained runner to win the Kentucky Derby since World War II. On May 1, Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum of Dubai, the world’s richest racehorse owner and for more than 15 years the dominant figure on the turf in Britain, will attempt to conquer a new frontier.
The sheikh’s Godolphin stable, which has already won grade one prizes in Europe, Asia and Australasia, is attempting to win the derby with either Worldly Manner or Aljabr, both of whom have been trained through the winter in Dubai by Saeed Bin Suroor. The two colts touched down in Louisville last week, and will be committing the outrageous heresy in American eyes of trying to win their derby without even so much as a prep race on US soil.
Aljabr, given a 25-to-one quote by bookmakers William Hill, was last year’s champion European two-year-old. British punters would doubtless prefer to see him at Newmarket on Saturday competing in one of Britian’s largest races, the 2 000 Guineas rather than making his dirt track debut in Kentucky.
Worldly Manner, a five-to-one chance with Hill’s, is in a different category. The son of Riverman was trained in the US last year by the dual Kentucky Derby winning handler Bob Baffert, for whom the colt won three of his four starts as a two-year-old. Godolphin bought Worldly Manner last Autumn for a reported $5-million, and although he hasn’t run in public since, he posted a blistering time in a nine-furlong gallop on the sands of Dubai back in March. And his Arab owners are displaying a deadly professionalism as they plot their assault on the Kentucky summit.
The mount on Worldly Manner has been offered to the crack American jockey Jerry Bailey. The 41-year-old winner of the 1993 and 1996 Kentucky derbies was flown out to Dubai especially to partner Worldly Manner in his key workout and he was mightily impressed.
“He’s a very big, good-looking horse and from what I felt he has probably not lost anything at all from last year. Some in the US are taking Godolphin lightly but that could be a big mistake. They are not going there to be embarrassed.”
The Maktoums have been buying superbly bred yearlings in Kentucky for the best part of two decades, and Sheikh Mohammed was a major shareholder in the French-trained Arazi, who flopped in the Kentucky Derby in 1992. But until recently, most ordinary American sports fans probably knew as much about Dubai and its racing-mad sheikhs as they did about Kosovo before President Bill Clinton’s televised geography lesson.
There are four brothers in the family. The eldest, Sheikh Maktoum Al Maktoum, became the ruler of Dubai and the vice-president of the United Arab Emirates on the death of his father, Sheikh Rashid, in 1990. Sheikh Hamdan, the second eldest and the owner of the 1989 and 1994 Epsom Derby winners Nashwan and Erhaab, is Dubai’s deputy ruler and the Emirate’s minister for finance and industry.
The youngest brother, Sheikh Ahmed, is in charge of what is described as the central military command and he shares his siblings’ enthusiasm for horses. But it is the third brother, High Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, crown prince of Dubai and the Emirate’s defence minister, who is by far the most powerful individual in both political and racing circles.
The sheikh is an imposing man. Aside from horses, his passions include Formula One, camel racing and falconry and, as befits his military training, he’s a crack shot and an accomplished flyer. In his more Western clothes and moments he can come across like a supporting character in a Frederick Forsyth novel. But to see him in the desert, holding court in his tent or watching his horses exercise at dawn, is to be aware of a presence at once both inscrutable and charismatic.
The sheikh has spent half his life bringing his formidable energies to bear in pursuit of a dream: to focus the world’s attention on the Middle East through the thoroughbred, the beautiful and unpredictable creature that owes its origin to the region.
Every thoroughbred racehorse competing in the world today can trace its lineage back to three Arab stallions “imported” into Britain more than three centuries ago. And the sheikh’s determination to see the thoroughbred return in glory to its desert roots underpins his Godolphin enterprise.
“Sheikh Mohammed wants to win the Kentucky Derby because it is one of the biggest races in the world and he’s a natural competitor,” says his main English trainer John Gosden. “But the evolution of his interest in America is also a reflection of his commitment to promote Dubai.”
The seven city states of the United Arab Emirates are all on the Gulf Coast and Dubai is the richest and the most commercial. Once it traded in spices, slaves and gold, and the narrow wooden- roofed streets of the Gold Souk are still lined with shops selling 24-carat watches, bracelets and the kind of diamond signet rings Sheikh Mohammed gives to his jockeys as a present.
The image that Dubai presents to the world is dazzlingly modern with its skyscrapers, luxury hotels and apartment buildings. It is not a democracy and there are despotic elements to the regime, but as the expatriots are keen to remind you, there is no income tax or value-added tax in the Emirates and the Dubai duty-free shopping centre at the airport is a massive generator of income.
Dubai’s beaches and leisure and sporting facilities have been developed to an unprecedented degree. The Emirates Golf Club, its modernistic white clubhouse shimmering like a mirage in the sand, is host to the annual Desert Classic, the first Middle Eastern golf tournament to be included on the European PGA circuit.
Dubai also stages a $1-million tennis tournament, while the $4-million US Dubai World Cup, which first took place at Nad Al Sheba in 1997, is now established as the richest horse race on the planet – in each of its three runnings, it has been supported not only by top European and Maktoum-owned horses but by leading competitors from the US.
Getting the Americans to recognise, visit and invest in Dubai by publicising his horses in their own backyard is, of course, at the heart of Sheikh Mohammed’s strategy.
The Maktoums’s religion forbids them from gambling directly. But as the Old Kentucky Home is about to discover, when it comes to high-stakes racing on an international scale, Godolphin is by far the biggest player at the table.