‘Frail’ Sheikh Mohammed splashes £3.9m on horse in rare public appearance

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum made a rare appearance in Britain on Tuesday to purchase the day’s top lot at Tattersalls.

The ruler of Dubai, 76, a somewhat frailer version of the young prince who established the Godolphin thoroughbred stable in the early 1990s, outbid football agent Kia Joorabchian at 3.7m guineas (£3.9m) to take lot 90, a chestnut colt sired by Sea The Stars.

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He was not, it appears, in the mood to go home without it.

“The colt was majestic in the way he moved,” said Anthony Stroud, the Sheikh’s bloodstock agent. “He really stood out. It’s like buying a work of art, now we’ll just have to see if he’s a Monet or a Matisse.”

Tattersalls, the main auctioneer of race horses in the UK and Ireland, is one of the few places in Britain where Sheikh Mohammed is prepared to turn up in person.

His arrival half an hour before lot one appeared to calm a few nerves among vendors. With two purchases in the first 10 lots, one of 735,000 gns (£771,750) and one of 420,000 gns (£441,000), he burned through his first million within half an hour.

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Joorabchian took the defeat on the chin. “The horse we really wanted was the Frankel,” he said. “The Sea The Stars was a beautiful horse but he wasn’t a must-have for us. You’ve got to be a bit disciplined at some point!

“We were up against Coolmore then Godolphin, trying to buy good pedigree mares and make stallions. They’re 30, 40 years ahead of us. We’re playing catch-up. We’re starting the process. The only way you can accelerate it is by buying a big stallion but they are not for sale.”

Joorabchian made a huge splash at last year’s Tattersalls yearling sales and was responsible for more fireworks on Tuesday when he paid 3.6m gns (£3.78m) for a son of Frankel.

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Joorabchian already has the full-sister of Frankel’s son, an unraced two-year-old called Partying on whom he spent a near record 4.4m gns (£4.62m) at Europe’s most prestigious bloodstock sale 12 months ago.

Having spent 23m gns in total last year, on Tuesday he blew out Coolmore, an organisation which for several decades only had to worry about the size of Sheikh Mohammed’s wallet.

If Rachel Reeves wakes up on Wednesday morning and takes a cursory glance at the headline figures of Tattersalls Book One – top lot 3.7m gns, average 323,000 gns per yearling (down 11 per cent on a year ago), bearing in mind the average cost of a house in Britain is £300,000, and a turnover of 40.4m gns – she will not only think she can raise the tax on racing betting by six per cent, she can raise it by about 20 per cent.

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But Book One is not real life, it is a group of mainly foreign investors – Americans increasingly featured after Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” which means in America you can write off 100 per cent of a racehorse against tax in year one – splashing out for numerous reasons, with many extending to ego.

If nothing else, Book One is great theatre. On lot 15 auctioneer Alastair Pim initially invited bids of a “couple of million” before coming down to 300,000 gns for his first taker. As the increments got bigger, so the auditorium got quieter until you could almost hear a pin drop before tapping his hammer down to Joorabchian’s bid of 3.6m gns.

“The boys loved him,” said Joorabchian. “We could not let him go. We want to keep the family tight and see how it works out. Obviously if he’s a good horse, he is going to be a stallion. He probably goes to Freemason [the Newmarket yard which he bought from Sir Michael Stoute and in which he has installed young trainer Kevin Philippart de Foy].

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“Obviously we like the filly though she has not run yet. This is a different project, if she does not run she still has huge residual value as a broodmare. We have five stallions. If he does not run well, then it is a different kettle of fish. We paid more than expected but then we are up against Coolmore and its five partners against one. It is an early strike.

“Frankel and Dubawi are getting old and Wootton Bassett is no longer around,” he explained. “Everyone is after the next one, we’re looking for a younger stallion and that will take time.”

The fact that Poker, a 4.5m gns purchase at this sale last year, could only finish sixth on his debut recently is immaterial. Joorabchian is looking at a much bigger, longer-term picture; bloodstock’s new man on the block will have to be many times bitten before he is twice shy.