This city is a glistening ultramodern melting pot with antique adornments. A spicy potpourri of nationalities and cultures enhanced by multiethnic tourists and business travelers, it simmers in a coastal desert, straddling a wide creek that winds inland about 7 1/2 miles from the Persian Gulf.
One of the seven city-states that make up the United Arab Emirates, Dubai has a population of 772,500, approximating Milwaukee in size. But Dubai is like nowhere else. Deeply rooted in Islam, it tolerates those of other faiths and caters to the secular lifestyle, offering a raucous nightlife second to none for tourists and transplanted Westerners.
Largely because of the efforts of Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, its crown prince, it also has become the newest world capital of horse racing, a stately pleasure dome that embraces the past, present and some say the future of the sport.
As the world’s finest horses converge Saturday at Arlington Park for the eight races that comprise the Breeders’ Cup, the influence of the Sheik and his family will be unmistakable. Their Godolphin Stable, directed by Sheik Mohammed, is bringing three horses to run at Arlington: E Dubai in the $4 million Classic; Imperial Gesture in the $2 million Distaff; and Kazzia in the $1 million Filly and Mare Turf. In addition, Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid al-Maktoum has a horse in the $1 million Mile, Touch of the Blues.
At 52, Sheik Mohammed is the most dynamic and powerful individual in the history of thoroughbred racing, the creator of an unparalleled equine empire and the force propelling the sport’s move toward globalization.
Historically, the accomplishments of thoroughbreds belonging to Sheik Mohammed have been rivaled by only two other owners: his older brothers and partners in Godolphin Stable, Sheik Maktoum and Sheik Hamdan bin Rashid al-Maktoum.
Dubai’s Nad al Sheba Racecourse is a magnet for elite horses from Europe, North America, South America, Australia, the Far East and the Arab countries. It also is host to the 7-year-old Dubai World Cup series, the richest such event in the world, with purses totaling $15.2 million for five thoroughbred races and one for purebred Arabians.
By contrast, the 19-year-old Breeders’ Cup offers eight thoroughbred races with purses totaling $13 million.
“It’s my responsibility to ensure the Dubai World Cup race meeting is maintained as the biggest international race meeting in the world, and that’s what it is,” said Les Benton, an Englishman who is chairman of the Dubai World Cup and chief executive officer of the Emirates Racing Association. “We attract more international competition than any other race meeting and have done so for the last three years.
“I know some people will say Arc de Triomphe day (at Longchamp in Paris) has five Group I races, and the Breeders’ Cup has eight. But . . . we have the biggest and best card in the world.”
Kevin Greely, a transplanted Kentuckian who has been the Dubai World Cup’s racing secretary since its inception, points to a program showing horses from the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, England, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Qatr and Saudi Arabia had come to compete in the most recent World Cup.
The track paid all travel expenses.
Where does the money come from? Not from parimutuel betting–gambling is illegal in the UAE.
Arlington Chairman Dick Duchossois, while voicing respect and admiration for the Maktoum brothers, once said it best: “It helps when you own the country.”
Indeed, Sheik Maktoum is the ruler of Dubai and vice-president and prime minister of the parent nation. Sheik Mohammed is No. 2 in the Dubai chain of command, and Sheik Hamdan is minister of finance and industry and the UAE’s primary representative to OPEC.
The discovery of oil off the Dubai coast in the summer of 1966 put Sheik Maktoum, Sheik Hamdan, Sheik Mohammed and their other brother, Sheik Ahmed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, on the list of the world’s richest people.
Family income is said to approach $10 million per day, and they have used it to turn their trade- and commerce-oriented emirate into an Arabian-style hybrid of Switzerland and Hong Kong.
The oil also has enabled them to invest up to $2 billion in horseflesh over the past 26 years. Since 1985, the Maktoums have purchased six of the 11 most expensive yearlings ever sold at auction.
Their priciest acquisition was Snaafi Dancer, acquired for $10.2 million in 1983. (Only one other yearling has cost more money, Seattle Dancer, acquired for $13.1 million in 1985.) Snaafi Dancer never raced.
The height of the Maktoums’ spending at the annual Keeneland auction in Kentucky came in 1989, when they shelled out $44.125 million and accounted for 42 percent of the summer sale’s gross. They spent millions more at other sales in the U.S. and Europe.
According to their advisers, the Maktoums do not regard this colossal expenditure on fragile, skittish animals as a gamble. The thoroughbreds are just one of the diversified investments they have made in hopes of thrusting Dubai into the forefront of the global economy.
Dubai’s oil supply is expected to be depleted between 2025 and 2040. The Maktoums have hedged their bets by reinforcing the traditional trade economy with banking, telecommunications and tourism. Oil accounts for less than 10 percent of Dubai’s gross domestic product.
Unlike oil, the Maktoums’ mind-boggling supply of thoroughbred superstars is a renewable resource. Their acquisitions at the yearling sales over the years have given them stallions and broodmares endowed with designer genes and the bluest blood in the racing world.
Nevertheless, they keep adding more. John Ferguson, Sheik Mohammed’s most trusted bloodstock adviser, attends 12 auctions every year in the U.S., England, Ireland, France, Australia, Japan and Dubai.
Last year Ferguson purchased 52 yearlings for slightly more than $50 million, concentrating on Keeneland’s summer and fall sales but also checking out the merchandise in New York at Saratoga and in Florida at Ocala.
All told, the four Maktoum brothers have approximately 1,200 horses in training in Europe, the U.S. and Australia.
The highest profile belongs to their 250-horse Godolphin Stable. It’s a family All-Star squad. Each of the brothers and some of their children own the horses and Sheik Mohammed’s role is akin to that of a managing general partner.
This year Godolphin is going into the Breeders’ Cup with 16 Grade/Group I victories. Its horses have won 95 such races since Sheik Mohammed started the stable in 1993.
Sheik Maktoum was the first of the brothers to produce a classic winner. In 1982 his horse Touching Wood won the St. Leger in England and the St. Leger in Ireland.
The following year he took the English 1000 Guineas with Ma Biche and the Irish Derby with Shareef Dancer. In 1994 he won the Hong Kong Bowl with Soviet Line.
Sheik Hamdan has won the most prestigious race in the Southern Hemisphere, the Melbourne Cup, on two occasions: in 1984 with Al Talaq and in 1994 with Jeune, who went on to become Australia’s Horse of the Year. Earlier in 1994, Dumaani carried Sheik Hamdan’s colors to victory in the Keio-hai Spring, one of the few races in Japan open to foreign horses.
Godolphin has won three Breeders’ Cup races. Sheik Mohammed has owned three Breeders’ Cup winners and was co-owner of a fourth.
But the brothers’ greatest achievements have come in England. In 1995 the brothers’ horses won all five British classics, an unprecedented accomplishment, and a total of 75 Group I, II and III races in Europe–65 more than runner-up Daniel Wildenstein.
Such awesome shows of superiority have evoked occasional outbursts of resentment. Racing writer Ian Carnaby once blasted the Maktoums’ dominance in the 1995 Epsom Derby: “For pity’s sake, let’s try to get something straight,” he wrote. “If a man owns the 11-8 favorite in the Derby, and that horse breaks down in the race, but the man and his family are still responsible for three of the first four home in the most prestigious flat race in the world, that isn’t a monopoly, it’s a STRANGLEHOLD!”
But rival owner Bill Gredley once said, “No one could say the Maktoums are bad for British racing. They are bad for Bill Gredley. They came in when [English] thoroughbred racing was on its knees. Now they are going to take on the world. I only wish I had a billion pounds to take them on myself.”
Why are the Maktoums so obsessed with the thoroughbred? What has compelled them to make Dubai a world racing capital?
They believe they are reclaiming their legacy. The thoroughbred is the descendant of three Arabian horses–the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerley Turk–who were taken to England early in the 1700s and bred to the heavier, larger warhorses there to produce a distinct and superior strain of racehorse.
The name of their stable is a tribute to the Godolphin Arabian.
“When I was studying in England (at Oxford) I used to go to the races,” Sheik Mohammed once said. “The Europeans didn’t know where those horses that were racing descended from. All of them descended from the Arabian stallions.
“The horse is the life of the Arab. The Arab used to go thousands of miles to breed mares. He would flee on a horse. He would attack on a horse. The Arab loved the horse. When it rained he would bring it into the tent. When he had food, first he gave it to the horse and then the children.
“These animals are not machines. They are soul and blood and flesh.”
Yet the brothers are not satisfied with repeatedly winning the world’s most prestigious races and making the Dubai World Cup card one of racing’s signature events. They also are committed to improving the quality of racing throughout the 58-night Emirates Racing Association season that will begin Oct. 31 and continue through late April.
There will be 25 nights of racing at Nad al Sheba, which has both dirt and grass racing, and Benton is making plans to simulcast these cards to the U.S., South Africa, England and other countries in Europe.
Most of the horses are quartered in state-of-the-art stable areas near the track. “Everything is the best,” said Greely, son of former Keeneland president and general manager Bill Greely. “We have a nutritionist. The barns have central air-conditioning and we have a fleet of nine air-conditioned vans to transport horses from Dubai to the other tracks.”
It’s not just the horses that are pampered.
“In the whole world there’s not a better life for a trainer,” said John Sadler, a 48-year-old Australian who moved to Dubai three years ago. “We have lovely, quiet areas with beautiful barns. We spend three months getting them ready, six months racing and have a three-month break, giving everybody a chance to have their holiday. It’s a good life.”
Another year-round resident is Doug Watson, a 37-year-old graduate of North Central College whose father lives in Naperville. Watson is an assistant to Kiaran McLaughlin, a fellow American who goes back to the U.S. with a stable of Maktoum horses to race during the late spring, summer and early autumn.
“I came over for a year and nine years later I’m still here,” he said. “Dubai is a fantastic place to live.”
It especially is for the 800 thoroughbred and 300 purebred Arabian racehorses stabled in pristine, modern facilities near Nad al Sheba.
Benton says Dubai racing has “just scraped the surface” in the Maktoum brothers’ quest for excellence.
For the past three years, the Emirates Racing Association has worked to bring more international horses, especially those from Europe, to race at Nad al Sheba. “That has come to fruition,” he said. “We have a full barn this year, which will make our racing more competitive and more international throughout the year. We’re getting better and better horses.
“This augurs well for the future. The whole concept of racing in the UAE is one of internationalization and globalization. Horses will certainly go from here to compete around the world. They’re doing that already.
“When a horse from here wins or places in the Kentucky Derby, people will sit up and take notice. There’s no doubt it will happen.”
