Riyadh

This column is not really supposed to start until the Flat turf season gets underway but we saw the sunshine in Newmarket on Monday morning for pretty much the first time this year so we're jumping the gun a little. After all, there was plenty of top-class Flat action on offer over the weekend in the Middle East and beyond, and following some frenetic race reporting on the spot in Riyadh, here are a few thoughts and breeding angles with the benefit of some time for reflection. Deep influence  With...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- If there is one thing better than winning a major international race with a homebred, it is when that horse just happens to be by an under-the-radar sire who carried those same colours. So is the story of Alex and JoAnn Lieblong's journey from Arkansas to Saudi Arabia to take the G2 1351 Turf Sprint with their pride and joy Reef Runner. The five-year-old gelding is a son of GI King's Bishop Stakes winner The Big Beast, who stands in Florida for the princely sum of...

Mickael Barzalona landed a hat-trick of victories at King Abdulaziz Racecourse on the eve of the Saudi Cup to clinch not just the International Jockeys' Challenge but also the valuable Saudi International Handicap.  With the first two legs of the four-race jockeys' contest having been won by Britain's Saffie Osborne and German Derby-winning rider Nina Baltromei, the Frenchman ensured the spoils would be his by taking the final two heats on the turf. Barzalona's victory aboard Year Of The Dragon in round four came at the expense of Norwegian-born Frida...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- It's what sport is all about, isn't it? Choosing your team and rooting for them, through good games and bad times.  The fleeting nature of the careers of some racehorses can make it harder to be a fan, but not if you pick Team Yahagi. For a start, there is a good chance that Yoshito Yahagi will turn up at a major meeting almost anywhere in the world with at least one horse. In Riyadh, a city which has become a happy hunting ground for the...

A horse has never won two editions of the $20-million G1 Saudi Cup, and Japanese Horse of the Year Forever Young (Real Steel) will try to break into that rarefied air after drawing post position six on Wednesday, ahead of Saturday's race. Also voted a champion in the U.S. after taking the GI Breeders' Cup Classic last autumn, the likeable bay will face 13 rivals at King Abdulaziz Racecourse in a few days' time. "I think six is a good number," trainer Yoshito Yahagi said. "We don't have to change...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- The international contenders may have been out in force on Wednesday morning but there is one horse who dominates the spotlight and he has every right to it. Forever Young first set foot on King Abdulaziz racecourse two years ago when he arrived as a three-year-old to take the Saudi Derby before going on to triumph in Dubai. He was then involved in an almighty tussle at Churchill Downs, where he went down by the merest of fractions to Mystik Dan and Sierra Leone in the...

The Asian Racing Conference (ARC) will meet in Riyadh from February 9-14 in conjunction with the Saudi Cup meeting. The theme is "Honouring Tradition, Shaping the Future" and consists of a three-day business programme designed to provoke meaningful dialogue, strategic insights and key learnings to address the challenges and opportunities facing the horseracing industry. A gathering of the International Forum for the After Care of Racehorses (IFAR) will take place on Monday, where HRH Prince Bandar bin Khalid Al Faisal, chairman of the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia (JCoSA), will...

The 14 participants for the 2026 International Jockeys' Challenge in Riyadh during the Saudi Cup meeting, were revealed on Wednesday. Featuring 14 jockeys, seven men and seven women, the four-race contest sees the return of last year's champion, local rider Mohammed Aldaham. Mickael Barzalona, the regular rider of the Longines World's Highest Rated Racehorse Calandagan (Gleneagles) is signed on, as is 2025 Irish Champion Jockey Dylan Browne McMonagle. Panama's Luis Morales is based in Saudi Arabia alongside Aldaham. Other male jockeys set to mark their mark on the contest include:...

Racing begins at King Abdulaziz Racecourse in Riyadh on October 16, the first of 50 meetings before the February 14, 2026 $20-million G1 Saudi Cup concludes the season, the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday. The schedule change was made to accommodate the Holy Month of Ramadan, which falls around February 28. The seventh running of the Saudi Cup coincides with the 41st Asian Racing Conference, titled 'Honouring Tradition - Shaping The Future', which takes place in the country from February 9 and closes at The Saudi Cup....

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Japanese-trained runners dominated the Saudi Cup meeting, landing the big race itself and a clean sweep of the turf races, while peppering results elsewhere on the card with placed finishers.  A little sprinkling of European spice was added to the mix in the French breeding of the G2 Howden Neom Turf Cup winner Shin Emperor (Fr), whose heritage is shared by Christophe Lemaire, rider of the G2 1351 Turf Sprint winner Ascoli Piceno (Jpn) but now just as much a son of...

RIYADH, KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA -- Making his first appearance in the International Jockeys' Challenge on the eve of the Saudi Cup meeting at King Abdulaziz Racecourse, journeyman jockey Muhammad Aldaham became the first homegrown rider to take out the competition, amassing a total of 30 points with victories in the first two legs of the series. Australia's Rachel King finished on 25 points to finish second ahead of James McDonald, whose 21 points was achieved in three races, owing to the scratching of his ride in race three of...

When Iowa-bred Cyclone State (McKinzie) breaks out of the starting gate for Saturday's $1.5-million G3 Saudi Derby, part of the Saudi Cup undercard at King Abdulaziz Racecourse in Riyadh, odds are that the loudest cheers will be emanating from halfway across the world at the Iowa State University (ISU) Equine Farm. That is where the colt, bred by Allen Poindexter, was born on April 29, 2022. It's an evening foaling that Nikki Ferwerda, a faculty member of the ISU Animal Science department and manager of the university's equine facilities, still...