from aristocracy, to maharajahs, to sheikhs, to perhaps penury.

​Sheikh Mohammed and his brother Sheikh Hamdan are no spring chickens, you know. Both of them are old enough to draw a pension. Prince Khalid Abdulla is even older. Even J.P. McManus is older than we would like him to be. John Magnier and the boys of Coolmore, too. Yes, there is Qatar Racing and other relative youngsters waiting to assume the mantle of top racing dog held in our time by Coolmore and Godolphin, yet it has to be acknowledged there are indications that the time of the big battalions might soon be coming to an end.
Horse racing has always had wealthy men and women with large stables of racehorses, their own private trainers and retained jockeys; people with the wherewithal to live their lives any damn way they chose to. The earliest power houses of the turf, or power stables, were in the keep of the British aristocracy. Viscount Falmouth, owner of 18 classic winners between 1874 and 1883. The Duke of Westminster, with a slightly measly 11 classic winners, though he did have the good fortune to own Ormonde, one of the first truly dominant horses to leave their mark on the species. Westminster’s reign of supremacy lasted from 1880, the year he first won the Derby (he won 4 Derbies in total) with Bend Or, through to 1906 when Troutbeck won him his third St.Leger.
The Duke of Portland also won 11 classics but over a shorter time period to the Duke of Westminster. In 1888 he won the 2,000 Guineas with Ayrshire and in 1900 he won both the Oaks and St.Leger.
Coincidentally, the Earl of Rosebery also won 11 classics beginning with Ladas in the 1894 2,000 Guineas and finishing in 1924 when Plack won him the 1,000 Guineas.
Throughout these formative years of the turf many tried to influence their way up the society ladder by owning racehorses, with a great many of them stumbling and falling by the wayside. Sir George Chetwynd and the Earls of Durham and Lonsdale being amongst this unfortunate number. And then there were the notoriously eccentric lady owners, the Duchess of Montrose, only her trainer Alec Taylor was allowed in her bedroom, and Dorothy Paget who did not allow any man into her boudoir.
Through the 1920, 30’s and 40’s and into the fifties, the wealth of India sparred with local owners and breeders for dominance, with the Maharajahs of Rajpipla and Baroda especially successful. And, of course, there has always been Aga Khans to the fore both here and in France, as is, thankfully, the situation today.
But where are the modern-day versions of Lords Derby and Howard de Walden? The equivalent, and we should be thankful for them, today is the rise of syndicates and racing clubs. But though they are splendid for the racing of horses, in the main they do not breed racehorses, as has traditionally been the situation with the top owners down the centuries.
I think it often but we will only truly appreciate the Maktoum brothers and the huge contribution they have made to the sport of flat racing, when they are dead and buried. No memorial will ever do justice to their worth to our sport. They will leave a legacy, I have no doubt, and their work will continue in the hands of their descendants, but the record book clearly shows that dynasties fade away into memory, to be replaced for years and years by pale shadows. Will flat racing survive yet another changing of the guard?
In the present economic climate, with government restrictions on society strangling the life out of every sport and pastime, with the hands of ruling bodies tied by propaganda protocols and frustrated by inconsistencies that now amount to the size of small mountains, if a financial route out of the quagmire is not decided upon in short order – it is said that the present state of affairs may still be gripping our throats come the Cheltenham Festival – the sport of flat racing in a season or twos time might resemble the days of the Dukes Westminster and Portland, with only the very richest of people able to hold together a string of racehorses. It might yet be worse, of course, we might revert to the days of match races across Newmarket Heath.
The usually admirable Richard Hoiles, guesting as a columnist for the Racing Post this week, said of the idea of a Tote Monopoly, ‘that it was a ship that had sailed’. Yet he asked readers not to reject his proposals for a financial rescue package out-of-hand but to suggest improvements to his ideas, even though he rejects out-of-hand a funding stream that is responsible for virtually every other racing nation on Earth having better prize money than us.