Winning streak

By Julian Rogers, Deputy Editor

With Dubai’s forced restructuring of its debt, now wouldn’t seem the ideal opportunity to unveil the government-owned, mega-project Meydan Racecourse. Yet the numbers, and dirhams, involved are quite staggering and Dubai Racing Club CEO Frank Gabriel Jr tells Business Management’s Julian Rogers that this development signals the future for racing in the region.

“The Dubai World Cup in March will include the world's richest ever race with a wallet-busting US$10 million prize for the winner”
-Frank Gabriel

The starting stalls flash open and the fillies competing in the curtain raiser to the evening's racing instinctively react, bursting out onto the smooth virgin surface. A roar goes up from a fervent crowd in which racing's nobility and wealthy Arabs rub shoulders with ordinary racegoers. All are here to witness another piece of Dubai history and a new dawn for racing in the region: the first ever race meeting at the new behemoth racetrack that is Meydan.
Right up until its opening for the Dubai International Racing Carnival on January 28th, labourers were swarming all over the shiny new development as they put the finishing touches to what is, without doubt, the largest and most spectacular horse racing venue in the world. And it ought to be, especially seeing as Meydan Racecourse is estimated to have cost an eye-watering Dh10 billion (US$2.7 billion) - around twice the amount shelled out on Dubai's new Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. Meydan's gleaming grandstand - the centrepiece of the development - is a quite staggering 1.6 kilometres in length (the world's longest) and houses 72 luxury suites and restaurants. The whole venue can hold upwards of 60,000 spectators while the rooftop Bubble Lounge can accommodate 4500 people alone. With state-of-the-art surroundings, including the world's longest LED television screen at 110 metres, this place oozes opulence on a grand scale.  

And once the sun disappears, Meydan, which means 'meeting place' in Arabic, ratchets up its appeal with the white beams of light from the floodlights ricocheting off the gleaming glass-encrusted grandstand. Racing under artificial light at night, and in the desert, adds glitz and glamour to a setting and atmosphere unique to any sport anywhere in the world. The common consensus of opinion from spectators is that Meydan has raised the bar for racetracks with one trainer's assistant describing the development as "mind-boggling" in terms of scale. Top Italian jockey and local favourite Frankie Dettori was unequivocal when he labelled Meydan the "best track in the world".

Plaudits like this are music to the ears of Dubai Racing Club CEO Frank Gabriel, who played a vital role in the concerted effort to finish the project in time for the Carnival. "We all worked many hours in getting this facility open," the relieved US-born racing chief explains alongside the track's azure-coloured rooftop swimming pool the morning after the night before. The original two construction firms were sacked after the development fell behind schedule, prompting fears Meydan wouldn't be finished in time. Fortunately, the substitute builders delivered on their promises. "With any project like this there are a lot of challenges and probably the biggest one was time," Gabiel ponders. "However, we were able to manage the time to the best of our ability and open on January 28. With Meydan we were asked to look at the future of racing and how we would develop the sport in the UAE in five years. We were also always conscious of the fact that the first priority was to offer a safe facility for the horses and jockeys and a good facility for the media, fans and guests," he explains.

Around 30 horses from Europe and some of the world's elite jockeys, including Dettori, Kieren Fallon and Christophe Soumillon, made the journey over for the first meeting. And whilst Gabriel says the soft opening produced a "good crowd and good atmosphere to witness the new structure" this was merely the hors d'oeuvre to the main course: the Dubai World Cup in March. This meeting includes the world's richest ever race with a wallet-busting US$10 million prize for the winner. The mountain of cash on offer is certainly a juicy enough carrot to entice owners to jet their horses to Dubai from all over the world "The prize money doesn't hurt," Gabriel laughs. Indeed, Meydan's magnetism and the allure of the World Cup has sparked a record number of owners looking to enter their runners. "This eight-race event is a focal point in racing - it's marked on the calendar and fits very well around global racing," he asserts. "People around the world point to this night of racing and we have been working very hard to bring over the best horses from around the world and we will continue to maintain our status and push further."

Horses for courses

You could be forgiven for thinking that a multibillion-dollar racecourse development would be packing meetings into the racing calendar thick and fast. However, Meydan will only stage 21 days racing a year between November and March. This is partly why the whole site, part of Meydan City, will include an iMAX cinema, a five-star hotel (290 rooms with balconies overlooking the track), a racing museum, golf course and marina for 80 yachts. The other elements are there to keep the place open for business 365 days a year - even when the horses are at home, Gabriel says. "With Meydan we had to look at the vision of how to operate a facility that only has racing for 21 days a year, which was why we looked at making sure other parts of the facility were a revenue stream outside of the racing dates." He adds that the idea of staging more race meetings is trumpeted, although this depends on avoiding the hottest months of the year. While the limited days of sporting action are sure to draw the crowds, the goal will be to see the hotel and other facilities busy, particularly for corporate events, exhibitions and conferences.

Sprint finish

Not known for their tardiness when it comes to constructing high profile landmarks, Dubai has taken Meydan from the drawing board to reality in just 34 months. The concept was the brainchild of the Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, whose love affair with the sport is only matched by his passion for transforming Dubai into the world's premier business and tourism hub. Meydan, which boasts a turf and dirt track, is built on top of the old Nad Al Sheba racetrack - a sporting arena that had served up some of the best racing in the world but one that had reached its ceiling for attendances. Nad Al Sheba was the stage for the World Cup since 1996. "We were pretty much handcuffed in increasing attendance for the Dubai World Cup because of the infrastructure and the grandstand [at Nad Al Sheba]." Gabriel recalls. "It had served us very well for 14 years and there are some great memories, but we wanted to take that existing 40,000 to 50,000 capacity and increase it by an additional 15,000, which is why we decided to build Meydan."

According to Gabriel, the experience gained from hosting the World Cup at Nad Al Sheba was used to mould Meydan's development. For instance, the World Cup has been run on the dirt since its inception but this time it has been superseded by the synthetic Tapeta Footings surface, which the manufacturers claim is the finest surface for equine performance. This synthetic track will also attract horses suited to turf too. With top-grade racing on offer, Meydan is expected to entice 300,000 race-goers during the Carnival and including the World Cup. On the eve of the racecourse's opening, Meydan Chairman Saeed H Al-Tayer told reporters: "At Meydan, we have facilities that we have never had before and will be bringing race-goers as close to the action as possible. Meydan was benchmarked against the world's top racecourses to ensure the best racing experience."
The facilities outside of the racing will be key to Meydan's success, with Dubai being the GCC nation hit hardest by the global economic storm during the past 12 months. Maybe if Dubai had foreseen the financial strife on the horizon Meydan would have been shelved. However, if Gabriel is worried about Dubai's woes affecting the project, he isn't showing it. "The economic situation has affected everyone in the world, however we were able to maintain a good relationship with our partners and sponsors and we hope 2010 will be a successful racing season."

One vision

Sheikh Mohammed, who has been the driving force behind Meydan, is a high-profile figure in racing breeding, being a leading partner in his family's Godolphin Stables who has been successful at the highest level all over the world. And it's this desire to be the best that has elevated the World Cup to where it is today with the one of the biggest purses in sport. "I think you have to look at first the vision of the Shelkh Mohammed being able to get the horse Cigar to come over from the USA in 1996," Gabriel says. "They got him here and he won. This set the stage for the World Cup and as an event it has grown leaps and bounds." This fascination with thoroughbred racing extends to the UAE population. "You have to look at how the horse has always been in the culture of the UAE and across this region to see how important horse racing is. And you have to respect the Maktoum family and the amount of time they have put into the sport, not just in competing but also the way they have been challenging and competing in the best races around the world, and they have put a lot of effort into their breeding programme in order to maintain that status."