By Matthew Cooper
Sir Alex Ferguson has landed a lucrative payday in Saudi Arabia after his racehorse Spirit Dancer won the Howden Neom Turf Cup on Saturday.
The legendary Manchester United manager was in attendance at the King Abdulaziz racecourse as the horse he bred and co-owns comfortably won the race and banked him £1.5 million in the process.
Spirit Dancer finished ahead of Killer Ability and Calif, much to Ferguson's delight. Speaking ahead of the race, he said: "It's been to Bahrain and did very well there and obviously this is a step up in standard, but we've got a really good horse and hopefully we can do well.
"It's not had a great deal of racing actually, for a seven-year-old it's not had a lot of races so we're always thinking it's really fresh. The hospitality [in Saudi Arabia] has been good, the standards of everything has been really top.
"I didn't expect it to be so big, I was here 14 years ago and it was nothing like it is today." The race in Bahrain that Ferguson is referring to is the Bahrain International Trophy, which Spirit Dancer won back in November to earn £500,000 in winnings.
As Ferguson celebrated that win, the 81-year-old was grabbed for a huge by fellow co-owner Ged Mason and joked he was left with a broken rib. When asked if there would be a repeat of the celebrations if Spirit Dancer won again, Ferguson said: "You mean my broken rib?! He grabbed me and jumped me up in the air and I'm going, 'Ged, Ged, Ged!'"
To which Mason replied: "Not guilty. Sorry, I don't normally celebrate that quickly until it's over the line but he came through like a train that day." Ferguson added, "I don't mind [breaking a rib] if we win!
"When I bred Spirit Dancer, we never dreamt we'd get as far as this. I went to Dubai a few years back and wondered what it would like to be on the international stage with a horse, and now we've got one there."
Ferguson is now involved with 32 different horses, having got involved in the sport while he was still managing United. "Around about '95, I remember my wife saying, 'You're going to kill yourself' because I was so heavily into the game with United that my whole day was absorbed by what the club was doing," he explained.
"So, I said to her one day 'Do you want to go to the racing?'. It was by accident in a way, I was over in Germany at Andreas Wöhler's place and he put that idea in my mind. I bought a horse from him, a mare called Queen's Dream, and a friend of mine suggested this operation down in Hemel Hempstead and I said, 'Well, we'll have a go!'"
Join our new WhatsApp community and receive your daily dose of Mirror Football content. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
