A neat overview of the progress of the world’s richest race before this weekend’s second edition appeared earlier this week under the headline ‘Saudi Cup Survives and Thrives Against All Odds’.
Written from an American viewpoint, the central argument rightly suggested that the two-day event had managed to overcome some fairly forbidding obstacles to claim its place on the world stage.
Moreover, the Saudi Cup has survived and thrived, “sprouted and flourished” to use the writer’s own words, which is undeniable when you look at Saturday’s card at King Abdulaziz in Janadriyah on the outskirts of Riyadh, featuring two days of international action, a cosmopolitan array of jockeys and horses, culminating in a potentially spectacular clash in the $20 million highlight.
However, “against all odds” … ? I mean, really? Let’s be clear: I have no urgent desire to denigrate the gigantic efforts involved in staging a brand new event on the racing road less travelled, nor to overlook the extra difficulties in organising such a ground-breaking event during a pandemic.
But the Saudis do have one substantial advantage – and it is far from an insignificant factor when you are attempting to persuade people to run their horses in a new environment on the other side of the world. Money, money, money. Now that’s what I’m talking about. Massive prizes, free entry and paid travel expenses probably help produce a quorum. “I’m going,” said Bob Baffert before last year’s race.“$20 million gets me off the couch,” added the west-coast legend, getting to the nub of the issue.
Put simply, this is not like trying to find a bit of change down the back of the sofa to fund a novice chase at Fontwell Park or pawning the starting gate to fill the field in a claimer in Puerto Rico. (They haven’t done that, by the way.)
Baffert duly saddled Pegasus World Cup hero Mucho Gusto to finish fourth behind Maximum Security in the inaugural Saudi Cup, with four-time G1-winning stablemate McKinzie back in 11th. ‘Uncle Bob’ is keen to make his presence felt again this weekend with brilliant Malibu Stakes winner Charlatan.
And yes, the truth is that while others have been standing still or even regressed, the Saudi Cup comes back ever-so-slightly beefed up for its second edition in 2021. For example, there is an intriguing new race on the Friday card with the Al Rajhi Bank Saudi International Handicap over 2,100 metres on turf.
This is open only to horses trained outside major racing nations, those not in Part I of the IFHA’s jurisdiction list, which allows places like the Czech Republic, Greece and Spain to get in the lucrative action.
Positive and imaginative
That’s a really positive, imaginative use of available finances. What is more, they can now claim to be responsible for the world’s richest raceday as well as the world’s richest single race, though this is more due to belt-tightening elsewhere owing to the privations of Covid-19.
A month after Saudi, the Dubai World Cup is still be worth $12 million, but prizes have been slashed for the other races on World Cup night to the extent the total purse for Meydan on March 27 will be $26.5m – down $8.5m from the 2019 total. The Saudi Cup card carries total purses of $30.5m.
Here it must be admitted that, as was the case amid the creation of the aforementioned Dubai World Cup 25 years earlier (and the Pegasus more recently), there are those who baulk at the perceived arriviste nature of the new multi-million-dollar contest in Riyadh. If it’s not cheap, then it must be vulgar, the thinking goes; Croesus might have chosen the Saudi Cup as a nice sponsorship vehicle.
And that is before we get to allegations of ‘sportwashing’ – understandable enough, though Saudi Cup organisers also deserve recognition for the event’s pioneering status and related attempts at opening up a hitherto shuttered destination.
Make no mistake, the advent of the male vs female jockeys’ challenge on Friday’s card, where Lisa Allpress and Sybille Vogt rode winners against their male counterparts, was a small but potentially significant (and well-advertised) step in the development of the Kingdom’s outlook on women.
Not that anyone would be naive enough to suggest the Saudi Cup was created as an act of unalloyed altruism; few things are, especially where green-backed dollars are concerned. Its origins lay in the ‘Saudi Vision 2030’ plan, unveiled nearly five years ago and offering a blueprint for the Kingdom’s bold project to diversify its economy in a necessary bid to reduce overwhelming dependence on oil.
Tourism, and therefore sport, provided an integral part of this initiative – in which context the Saudi Cup could be regarded as a stunningly ambitious statement of intent. It is, therefore, more than a little ironic that an event designed to promote tourism will be taking place minus a crowd.
Nevertheless, the whole thing could easily have been left looking like an exercise in hubris without a race to match its costly status. That’s where Cigar came in for Dubai – a race that faced greater hurdles a quarter of a century ago – with one of the most memorable performances in the modern era of international racing. The first Saudi Cup will also go down in racing folklore, albeit for reasons other than simply a headline performance from its headline act.
Yet the first edition of the richest race the world has ever seen did manage to produce a thrilling spectacle beneath the Arabian floodlights, and this despite the early warnings about Covid-19 that threatened to scupper the participation of late-arriving jockeys such as Ryan Moore when the kingdom temporarily banned ‘foreign pilgrims’ from entering the country.
Moore was replaced by in-situ Irad Ortiz on Friday; he got there on Saturday for Magic Wand, the Irish runner in a top-class field featuring five of the best dirt horses in America plus other stars from Europe, Japan and Dubai.
In the event, Maximum Security and his pals ensured the first Saudi Cup delivered something special – though that is easy to forget given what happened afterwards, for this was an undeniably brutal and in the end controversial race.
Apologies for the dreadful ‘I was there’-ness of this statement but, er, I was there and it was a privilege to witness such a contest.
Unfortunate aftermath
Hairs-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck time. Not quite as good as Cigar in Dubai (I was there too, incidentally) – but pretty darn special all the same. Why not as good as Cigar, you ask? Well, if you saw that race, you don’t need to ask, but also the world was a smaller place back then, and first-time visitors to the Gulf truly did feel like we were entering alien territory. You can’t reproduce those feelings; like the first time you set foot on a new continent. But Saudi was definitely different, and the race was memorable.
So too, though, was the unfortunate aftermath, although the brouhaha did not begin to emerge until a few hours after the event, when it leaked out that Mike Smith, who had ridden the runner-up Midnight Bisou, had transgressed the whip rules – at the time much stricter in Saudi Arabia than southern California.
Smith left Riyadh with a total of 11 days’ suspension, mainly for excessive use – and that wasn’t all, as the popular jockey also known as ‘Big Money Mike’ forfeited 60 percent of his share of $3.5m prize-money, which amounted to an estimated $210,000.
A double whammy indeed; that old Greek lawgiver Draco would have been proud. Smith branded the punishment “absurd”, labelling it as “the biggest penalty against a jockey in the history of horse racing”. All to little purpose, as his appeal was eventually thrown out.
Smith’s U.S.-based colleague Irad Ortiz also copped ten days’ suspension for whip misdemeanours, including on Mucho Gusto. British champion Oisin Murphy and French riding sensation Mickaelle Michel also received token bans for minor whip infringements.
Smith’s travails weren’t done there either. Insult was added to injury when he was stripped of his victory in the International Jockeys' Challenge after one of his mounts tested positive for a banned substance (cobalt). At least a two-day ban for failing to weigh-in after another race was dismissed. A small mercy, in the circumstances.
Mind you, despite Smith’s being hit hard, there could still be an ironic final outcome since the winner’s share of the world’s richest prize – a cool $10m – has yet to be paid out. It could conceivably end up in the pockets of the Midnight Bisou team, including Mike Smith (minus deductions), thanks to the biggest aftershock connected to last year’s Saudi Cup.
In retrospect Maximum Security’s trainer, Jason Servis, seemed unusually reticent after such a valiant effort under jockey Luis Saez to beat Midnight Bisou by three-quarters of a length. Saez was exultant; Servis behaved as if he had just won a two-bit claimer at Charles Town and wanted to get the hell outta Dodge.
‘Seismic’ development
It seemed like natural shyness and aversion to the media, or perhaps Servis was somewhat overcome by his achievement. We were just being naive, as it turned out the trainer possibly had every reason not to fancy any press probing, even the gentle stuff that usually happens after a big-race win.
Barely two weeks after the Saudi Cup, the American racing community was rocked to the core by FBI allegations – and subsequent charges – of systemic doping involving Servis and fellow G1-winning trainer Jorge Navarro. To call this development ‘seismic’ verges on understatement, and given that Maximum Security’s name was specifically mentioned in the conspiracy, the Saudis refused to distribute the winner’s prize-money until their own investigations were concluded. That hasn’t happened yet.
With all this in mind, one might be forgiven for thinking that the Saudi Cup was born under an especially inauspicious star. If Cigar put Dubai on the global racing map, Maximum Security did much the same for Saudi Arabia, albeit for rather more ambivalent reasons.
So here we are, 12 months down the line, same time, same place with another cosmopolitan array of horses, plus jockeys from the four corners of the globe. (In case you’re interested, I’m not there this time!)
Jorge Ricardo, the all-time world leader in career victories, jets in from Brazil for the jockeys’ challenge, where five continents are represented; no Aussies. In another frontier-crossing move, Hollie Doyle is set to become the first female rider in the Saudi Cup, where she partners Extra Elusive.
Poignant result?
Even Mike Smith is due back, letting bygones be bygones with $20 million on the line as he partners Saudi Cup favourite Charlatan in a potentially spectacular clash with Pegasus World Cup hero Knicks Go.
As both horses are blessed with abundant early speed, we might be treated to a duel for the ages. If they burn each other out, the likes of John Gosden’s Prix du Jockey Club winner Mishriff or G1 regular Tacitus are among those waiting to pick up the pieces. Both have prior experience of the Riyadh sand: Mishriff stayed on late 12 months ago to finish second in the Saudi Derby, while Tacitus was fifth in the main event. As he carries the iconic colours of the late Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte operation, a victory for the recently deceased Saudi prince might be deemed poignant indeed.
Chuwa Wizard represents Japan after winning the Champions Cup (former Japan Cup Dirt) with a powerful late run; Military Law, who nips across from Dubai, won the first round of the Al Maktoum Challenge at Meydan; Bahrain International hero Simsir comes from the kingdom that provided a pair of winners on last year’s card.
It is a truly global line-up on a fascinating 8-race card full of high-profile names, among them U.S. turf champ Channel Maker, July Cup winner Oxted, Melbourne Cup stalwart Prince Of Arran plus an ensemble of top Godolphin talent (Space Blues, Secret Advisor, Rebel’s Romance, Soft Whisper). Last year’s winners Dark Power (from Bahrain) and Call The Wind (France) are also back for more, alongside New York Central (Saudi) and Matera Sky (Japan), 1-2 from the dirt sprint.
The world stands completely transformed – changed, changed utterly, to borrow from WB Yeats, in the 12 months since the Saudi Cup came into existence. Looking at the runners and riders for Friday and Saturday, it is hard to quibble that it has “survived and thrived”. Against some odds, perhaps.