Africa & Middle East > United Arab Emirates > Dubai > Dubai City > Horse riding > Articles > Horse-Racing in Dubai

In Dubai, virtually everybody calls the ruling sheikh “The Boss”. Not only is this easier than calling him by his full title — Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum — but it neatly sums up the role he’s played (along with his father), in transforming Dubai's late 1960s oil windfall into a sustained trade based economic boom.

Not that this is all he’s been doing. Over the past decade or so, The Boss has amassed one of the biggest collections of quality thoroughbreds in the world, a billion dollar cavalry of more than 3000 horses. And ever since racing took off here in 1991, horses have become a national hobby, certainly for the wealthy elite. No visit is complete, then, without a trip to the races, which take place every Thursday night at the Nad Al Sheba track.

Horses and Arabs go back a long way. Some of the world's most important bloodlines come from the Arabian horse, the tough little dish-nosed breed renowned for its stamina and strength. Bedouins have been racing their horses for millennia. Indeed, Sheikh Mohammed's idea of a good time is saddling up at a moment's notice and galloping around in the desert for eight hours: the week before I arrived in Dubai, he'd won the US$270,000 Emirates Endurance Horse race, a 120km slog through Jordan.

Though somewhat less remunerative, the Thursday races are no less colourful. As the sun set over the grounds I wandered about, soaking up the warm, pillowy air and funky headdresses; the Pakistanis’ beehive turbans, the sheikhs' long white kaffiyehs; the Syrians' sweeping gutras and the distinctive Somalis, with baggy swirls of cloth piled up on their heads like whipped cream.

Up near the railing I got talking to two Egyptian men, a father and son working in Dubai; the father, Riek, a small mountain of soft flesh in a pink satin jalaba, his son, Omar, young and swarthy in a bright red headscarf. "Was up!" said Omar, high-fiving me. US-educated, Omar was in Dubai working for an oil company. "Pretty cool, this race thing. Me and my old man, we come all the time." Sitting cross-legged on the warm grass, Omar offered me a puff on his water pipe, the smoke from which I was surprised to find tasted unmistakably like... bananas. "We also have cherry, strawberry and bubblegum,” said Omar.

After a couple of tokes, I made my way to the Chairman’s box, courtesy of an invitation I’d received the night before at a business function. Up here, I was thrilled to discover beer, lots of it (in Dubai, you’ll get arrested for drinking in public), and the Chairman’s wife, Anne Osborne, a mischievous-looking Irish woman with an accent so strong I could barely understand a word she said. Osborn was busily filling out a Pick Six form, the local equivalent of gambling. Islam forbids punting, per se, but the authorities allow this watered-down alternative, whereby people attempt to nominate the winners in each of tonight's six races.

"It's huge here," she told me, gesturing at the grass below, where hordes of people were bent over race forms, chewing their nails, furiously Picking Six. "And it costs nothing. If you pick all six, you win about 30,000 Dirhams ($15,000)."

Just then the horses were led out for the first race, prancing and skittish, their long legs full of butterflies. The jockeys, most of whom were from the UK or Australia, looked even smaller than normal, like luminous little Gobstoppers tacked on to the animals’ backs. Nad Al Sheba is a 2200m left hand sand track, the surface of which is an hybrid of soil types sampled from some of the world's best courses — Churchill Downs, Kentucky, Saratoga. It's so well-maintained and spongy that when I walked on it earlier (again, courtesy of the Chairman), it felt as if I was walking on a water bed.

Osborne was telling me about the Dubai World Cup — with a purse of US$6,000,000 the world’s richest race — when over the top of our conversation came the announcer screaming "ANNNnnndthey'reoffnowladiesngennlmen," followed by a rabid tangle of words that sounded for all the world like two dogs in a cupboard ripping each other to pieces. Within minutes 10 huge horses were pounding past the post, anvil-like hooves lobbing up clods of earth the size of footballs.

“Nad Al Sheba isn't your average race meet,” Osborne had told me earlier. Indeed. At one point I looked down at the grass and saw the entire crowd on their knees praying to Mecca, which, being in the same direction as the grandstand, made it appear for one surreal instant as if several thousand people were bowing before the Chairman's box.

The races are run at half-hour intervals, just enough time to get another beer and/or reignite your water pipe. By the time the sixth and final race was run, people were starting to filter out, leaving behind hundreds of Pick Six forms, ripped and crumpled, the detritus of spent hope.

I took a walk about, savouring the post-race glow. Some folks looked happy, others disappointed, and still others bewildered, as if someone had hit them over the back of the head with a cricket bat. Like race meets the world over, Nad Al Sheba had its winners and losers, and those along for ride. Rendezvousing with Riek and Omar, I asked them how they'd fared. “Not good,” said Omar. “I Picked Six, but they didn't pick me. It’s no big deal, though.”

He leant over his hookah, smouldering with exotic scents, and asked with a consoling smile, “So, strawberry this time?”

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