Fergie cashing in on Eastern riches
WHILE it has been another season to endure rather than enjoy for Manchester United fans, former boss Alex Ferguson has had a glorious winter on the racecourse.
The 82-year-old has another ‘cup final’ to look forward to in Dubai this weekend, barely a fortnight after recording his first Cheltenham Festival wins courtesy of Protektorat in the Ryanair Chase and Monmiral in the Pertemps Hurdle.
But his most valuable successes have come via Spirit Dancer, the Richard Faheytrained gelding bred and owned by Ferguson, who is one of 12 runners chasing the £2.7million first prize in the mile-and-a-half Sheema Classic on Saturday’s Dubai World Cup card at Meydan racecourse.
Spirit Dancer’s winter progress has been a stark reminder of how much British and Irish racing struggles with prize money in comparison to overseas jurisdictions. As with the expansion of football in Saudi Arabia, which has splashed the cash to attract some of the sport’s biggest names, racing in the Middle East is now muscling up, too.
Dubai was the centre of the region’s thoroughbred racing industry when US horse Cigar won the first World Cup in 1996. Since then, Qatar has joined in as a major player, with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain now also involved in increasingly integrated programmes.
A racehorse can win spectacular sums in the Middle East and Spirit Dancer, who has made massive progress at the age of seven, has cashed in.
The gelding produced a career best in Britain when he won £96,000 in landing the Strensall Stakes at York in August. But his first win of the summer, in a York handicap in July, bagged Ferguson and his partners in the horse a mere £15,000.
Compare that with the £500,000 Spirit Dancer won when winning the Bahrain International Trophy in November and the £944,881 he skewered when successful in the Neom Cup at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia in February. In between, there was even £20,000 for finishing fourth in a race at Meydan and Spirit Dancer’s career earnings now stand at £1.7m.
Even allowing for the passage of time, that is a colossal sum when you recall that Rock Of Gibraltar, the colt who won seven consecutive Group One races in a spectacular run which included the 2002 English and Irish 2,000 Guineas, earned a mere £1.2m.
It was Rock Of Gibraltar who was at the centre of Ferguson’s falling out with the Coolmore Stud partners. If Spirit Dancer were to only manage eighth place in the Sheema Classic, he would add another £50,000 to his pot.
Fahey said: ‘We have had a good winter and it has been exciting. We couldn’t really have expected it. On the day, the Bahrain race looked hot and he put it to bed quite easily.
‘Then he had to come home because of quarantine rules but I sent him back because I wanted to acclimatise him for Saudi.
‘He was beaten by a better horse in Dubai but it meant I could leave him there for the Saudi race and he has now gone back to Dubai which he couldn’t have done last year.
‘They have changed the rules. The Middle East is becoming very on it and giving us poor little peasants from the north the chance to run for some decent money, which is massive, especially for a seven-year-old gelding.’
At this advanced stage of his career, Spirit Dancer’s official handicap rating has made a massive 21lb leap — 97 to 118 — in less than a year.
HIS task in the Sheema Classic is steep given his opponents are headed by Aidan O’Brien’s 2023 dual Derby winner Auguste Rodin, Emily Upjohn — the John and Thady Gosden-trained winner of last year’s Coronation Cup at Epsom — plus the 2022 Sheema Classic winner Shahryar, from Japan. But Spirit Dancer does not look out of place and Fahey is hoping the stamina supplied via the genes of his sire Frankel and the fact he has been finishing his races strongly means his first try over a mile and a half will be within his scope.
Fahey added: ‘When I saw the entries the other day, I had a bit of a shock, but if you are not entered you can’t beat them. It’s a good race. I am looking forward to seeing him run because he has had a great preparation.’
One consequence of Spirit Dancer’s successful overseas winter is that Ferguson is unlikely to see much of him on a British racecourse this summer, as Fahey plans for another overseas winter.
The trainer, who has high hopes for unbeaten three-year-olds Garfield Shadow and Airman, plus the useful Native American, for the domestic season said: ‘Spirit Dancer will have a good holiday and be trained to go out there again next year.
‘He will probably have a run or two before he goes back on his travels.
‘I would love to take him to Hong Kong at some stage. I couldn’t this year, because if you have been in Saudi you can’t go to Hong Kong, but it looks like they are going to sort that out. The world is getting smaller for racehorses.’