Cantering gleefully around a sandy paddock under the shadow of a skyscraper isn’t necessarily where you would expect to find a 31-year-old ex-racehorse. As rapid as Dubai’s development has been over the last 20 years, it hasn’t forgotten those who helped it on its way. That includes horses.
Dubai was a tiny, little-known Gulf emirate when Godolphin and their blue silks first arrived on British racecourses in the early 1990s. Remarkably, some of the horses who put them on the map are still around, living out their days at Dubai Racing Club’s Retirement Home and Rehabilitation Centre.
The 31-year-old is a son of Kahyasi, Massyar, who won the G2 Gallinule Stakes at the Curragh way back in 1993. At that time trained by John Oxx for the Aga Khan, a few months later he found himself in the Godolphin fold, a new direction that eventually saw him land in Dubai, via the UK and the USA, in 1995. Clearly a durable sort, he won here too, finishing his career with a more than respectable haul of seven wins from 41 starts.
More than two decades later, he’s still here, living out his life with around 60 other retirees, a mixture of Thoroughbreds and Arabians.
Nestled in the heart of Dubai, right next to seven-time champion trainer Doug Watson’s Red Stables and a few hundred metres from Saeed Bin Suroor’s Al Quoz Stables, the retirement home is run by manager Heather Copland, who has been in her role for 20 years.
“Massyar and I actually started together in Dubai,” she says, watching her oldest client having a pick of grass under the supervision of assistant Rehan Mirza. “He came over with Godolphin originally and arrived while I was at Zabeel Stables [home of six-time champion trainer Satish Seemar].
“I was friends with Diana Weedon, who rode him - she was the first lady rider to win a race here against professionals. When the time came for him to retire – he wasn’t injured, he’d just done enough - he came to us and he’s been here ever since. He’s a tiny little thing but has a lovely temperament, a real gentleman, and he’s doing brilliantly for 31.
“He’s in during the day, because of the heat, and then goes out into the paddock five or six hours from about 7pm. Then he’ll come in for some food – we feed him a lot of grain feed as well as hay to keep the weight on – and then he goes out again in the morning for an hour or so with his friends, including some retired mares we have. In fact, the combined ages of the [six] horses in this paddock is 183!”
Copland estimates that, in equivalent ‘human years’, Massyar is in his 90s, which makes him the stable’s eldest statesman, comfortably older than 27-year-old Swiss Law, who still shows some decent speed when turned out in the paddock. The winner of a Newmarket maiden back in 1997, when he beat subsequent Queen Anne Stakes hero Intikhab, the son of Machiavellian first raced in Dubai in 2000, his biggest win there coming in the 2001 listed Al Fahidi Fort, which is now a G2.
“Swiss Law was another one who came here with Godolphin and then he raced for Peter Brette, both as a jockey and a trainer,” Copland remembers. “He still moves really well for a 27-year-old, although we obviously don’t ask them to do anything really; just a ten- to 15-minute loose lunge around the paddock. This is a proper retirement home, so they are out in the paddock for most of the time, just enjoying life.”
The facility has a second element to it, however, that of rehabilitation and rehoming.
“With some of the younger horses who come to us sound, we do offer rehoming to suitable people”, says Copland. “They come to us first, so we can give them a break and do the basic rehabilitation with them, then we assess the potential owner and try to match them with the right horse. We are also now able to take horses from private owners outside of the Maktoum family, which is great.”
A good example of the program is 14-year-old Halling gelding Layali Al Andalus, who is now an outrider pony, having won three of his 41 starts, including two for Mark Johnston in the UK. He’s done so well in his new career that he recently prevented an accident when a horse got loose at Al Ain racecourse, his rider catching the miscreant before he headed towards the oncoming runners.
“When we got Layali, he was very settled, very easy to retrain, says outrider Alexander Thompson. “He’d been ridden at the retirement home, which helped to get him out of the racing mentality. I ride him in a bit-less bridle and he’s taken brilliantly to his new job.”
Another successful graduate from the centre is 11-year-old Hard Spun gelding Filfil, a 5-time winner, who is now showing a real flare for dressage at Dubai Equestrian Club, much to Copland’s delight.
“The best part of the job is seeing them thrive in their new lives,” she says. “They have so much to offer once they have finished racing. It’s fantastic that HH Sheikh Mohammed put this facility in place so that they can have that opportunity, together with similar schemes which Godolphin run in the UK, USA, Japan and Australia.”
The heart of Dubai might not be where you’d expect to find retired racehorses, but they couldn’t be in better hands.