Tomorrow sees the sixth renewal of the world’s richest horse race, the $20 million Saudi Cup. Originally viewed by some as little more than an obscenely rich bauble in a desert outpost it increasingly looks like proving the old Batman line about people eventually warming to anyone if they hang around long enough.
In fact, it was Adam West, the actor that played Batman in all his 1960s “Ka-Pow” glory, who said it. West spent decades written off as a leotard punchline before credibility as a deadpan comic actor finally came his way. The Saudi Cup’s rehabilitation hasn’t taken anything like as long.
In 2020 one word clung to the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia’s brainchild like a bad smell. The charge of “sportswashing” against the entire concept was loud and extensive. The race meeting at the King Abdulaziz racetrack got easily categorised as part of the Saudi regime’s attempts to rinse its horrible human rights record by pumping billions through sport.
There has been nothing subtle about how they’ve gone about it. Golf has been split down the middle by LIV. The Saudi league has flipped football’s finances on its head. Pro-boxing’s financial home is now in the desert. The moral shuffle pulled off by Qatar at the last football World Cup will be repeated in Saudi Arabia in 2034.
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By any objective measure it has worked. What takes place tomorrow is just another brick in a strategic wall designed to obscure its human rights record and polish a reputation for being a global tourism venue. There is $38 million overall in prize money up for grabs, and the world has arrived to play in the Saudi’s back garden.
Star of the show is Hong Kong’s superstar Romantic Warrior. He has never raced on dirt before. But $10 million to the winner is a convincing argument to shift disciplines. Among the more than 1,100 original entries were 81 Group One winners from 21 countries. Lining up on tomorrow’s undercard will be three Joseph O’Brien trained runners and one, Continuous, from Ballydoyle.
What is notable is how quickly this has become normal. In 2020 there was a Faustian feel to proceedings. The sportswashing element was too blatant to be ignored. That Maximum Security won the inaugural Saudi Cup seemed apt. In a world heading toward lockdown, the horse’s trainer Jason Servis was heading towards jail for doping.
But there is barely a peep about sportswashing now. The broader political context has moved on to where might is increasingly right. So, real politick trumps how the LGBTQ community are criminalised in Saudi Arabia. A journalist being hacked to death is unfortunate but not unforgivable. Migrant workers are dispensable. Because, as the orange grotesque in the White House once said, the Saudis pay cash.
The Saudi bet that throwing enough money at sport would ultimately pay off has come in. And it hasn’t taken long at all for worries about sportswashing to fade.
The SPL, with its own preening poltroon of a poster boy, Ronaldo, can legitimately argue it will soon be one of the world’s top five leagues. Other “ambassadors” include Rafael Nadal who has pocketed millions to smile on cue. Barely an eye is batted any more. Golfer Graeme McDowell must shake his head when recalling the flak he put up with when joining LIV just three years ago.
No part of the Saudi strategy has hit its stride faster than tomorrow’s action outside Riyadh. In five years, it has become firmly established in the international racing calendar. Back in 2020, the top US trainer Bob Baffert was asked if the big race would attract the best American dirt horses – “If they put up $20 million, they’ll get good horses in the gate.”
Baffert was right. In 2021 Mishriff’s victory was hugely significant. A top European turf horse proved the switch to Saudi dirt was doable. Two years later and Panthalassa scored for Japan. It underlined how the Middle East at this time of year is a lucrative neutral ground for some of the best from all parts of the world to clash.
Romantic Warrior’s apparent main danger tomorrow is Japan’s Forever Young. He won the Saudi Derby on this card a year ago, proceeded to win the UAE Derby a month later, and was an unlucky third in the Kentucky Derby. In between a subsequent pair of Group One victories in Japan, he was placed in the Breeders Cup Classic in California.
Now he’s back in Saudi with the big race itself in his sights, boasting an international profile that makes sense of what sceptics might previously have dismissed as a garish curio. There is a symmetry to it that will please the Saudi paymasters. This is reputation laundering at its most freshly pressed.
As Saudi investment in so many other sports suggests, maybe the reality is that enough money makes enough people forget. We’re in a time when what counts is how loud you say something rather than what is said. Hopelessly old-fashioned ideas about context, from all of five years ago, are at the bottom of the ethical handicap, whatever the human cost.
Something for the Weekend
Glen Kiln (2.15) looked to find three miles too far at the Dublin Racing Festival but drops back to the trip he won over in Navan in December at Fairyhouse tomorrow. Soft ground will be ideal for Michael Bowe’s charge. He hails from the family of Limestone Lad who famously thrived around this course and distance during his stellar career.
Tomorrow’s Winter Derby at Southwell has Champagne Prince (3.15) up against it on official ratings. But a more positive stat’ is how he has been beaten just once in six all-weather starts, including the trial for this race on New Year’s Eve. His main opposition have never raced at Southwell before, and this really does look like being Champagne Prince’s “Derby”’
