Picture: Forever Young wins the Saudi Cup for the second year in succession | Mathea Kelley/Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia
Forever Young was ranked third in the world in the Longines World’s Best Horses ratings in November last year behind the Irish-bred France-based Calandagan and the Irish-bred England-based Ombudsman, but it will be no surprise to him go to number one in the world following his second successive win of the world richest race, the $US20 million Saudi Cup, which was run on Saturday over 1800m on dirt at the King Abdulaziz Racetrack in Riyadh.
Forever Young is by a son of the legendary sire Deep Impact, Real Steel, and showed off his impressive stride, not to mention his courage, when fending off the Bob Baffert-trained Nysos to win by a length.
Baffert was magnanimous in his praise of Forever Young and likened taking him on to “King Kong taking on Godzilla.”
However, what is a touch surprising is nothing has been said about the pacemaker Banishing drifting off the rail turning for home which allowing a boxed in Forever Young to run through a dream gap on the rail.
South Africa’s Hall Of Fame jockey Michael Roberts once said, “I can tell you that in England if you were in contention and let a winner through down your inside you were often booed in the weighing room.”
Pat Cosgrave was actually given a six month ban in Dubai back in 2014 for allowing Vercingetorix through on the rail in the Gr 1 Jebel Hatta, but it was later reduced to four months and the BHA actually decided to not recognise the ban at all.
The difference between the Cosgrave case and the one in the Saudi Cup was Banishing was not a stable mate of Forever Young’s, unlike the horse who Cosgrave rode who was Vercingetorix’s stablemate, and Banishing was not serious contender at 100/1 odds, unlike the Cosgrave mount who finished third.
Roberts did say in the aforementioned article, “if I felt my mount had no chance, I would let another jockey through on my inside and expect him to do the same for me at a later date in a similar situation. But if I had a chance, even a place chance, I would hold my position and would not give an inch.”
In a US$20 million race which has prize money all the way down to tenth, it might still have been viewed by some as an uncompetitive move by jockey Adel Alfouraidi as Banishing finished eighth.
However, the majority of the racing public would probably prefer to praise the jockey for allowing one of the world’s best horses to have a clear run, which led to a fair result.
Forever Young now has career earnings of 4,560,834,500 Japanese Yen, which is the equivalent of US$ 29,736,679.31.
That means he is still marginally behind the earnings of Hong Kong-based Romantic Warrior as the highest earner in history as Romantic Warrior’s earnings at current exchange rates are US$ 30,722,028.04.
