Ahead of the 20th running of the Dubai World Cup on Saturday, Geoffrey Riddle gathers the recollections of the men who figured prominently on the night the world's richest horse race was launched.
I had no experience or understanding of travelling to the Middle East. I went there to train a horse, so it didn’t matter to me if I had anything more than a barn and a track to train on. The surprise was the amenities, which were just unbelievable.
Our hotel was extraordinary and there seemed to be parties every night. Our horse was owned and bred by Burt Bacharach, the singer who loves his racing. He came downstairs one night and commandeered the piano and played to anybody who gathered around it. In his mind, it was anything he could do to make it fun, which is what he did. It was his thing.
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I thought Soul Of The Matter was ready to run the race of his life. At his best he could run with anybody, but he had bad feet, which was usually the answer to any disappointment we ever had with him.
He almost beat Cigar. I thought at the eighth pole he put his nose in front of Cigar and had come from 14th place to do so. I thought then that I had got him. We thought he would run right by him. Cigar looked him back in the eye, gritted his teeth and dug in, and said, ‘No you don’t’.
I was incredibly proud of him, and so was Burt, who was in tears afterwards, admiring what his horse had done and the feeling of it all. I can’t remember what he said, but he loved that horse, it was obvious. Cigar was a great horse. He was a great campaigner – he had the mental capability and the physical capability. He also had the team behind him that helped him achieve that incredible run.
I felt like we were representing America in that part of the world. I don’t want to overstate it, but there were horses from Japan there, England, Australia. It was an international race to more extreme than I had ever seen.
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