TOM Ryan was driving back in to King Abdulaziz racecourse to pick up some paperwork on Tuesday evening this week when a car pulled up beside him.

“Well lads!”

Out popped Joe Banahan, Ado McGuinness and Shane Foley. Even during a pandemic, it seems you can meet Irish anywhere in the world. The three lads are in town for the second running of the Saudi Cup meeting and when you’re abroad, it’s always nice to see a few Irish faces.

It’s coming up to two years now since the man originally from Toomevara, Co Tipperary, received a telephone call from Saudi Arabia which was essentially the beginning of a headhunting process to have him take the reins on a new race meeting worth over $30 million.

After 13 years at Naas racecourse, where he began at the age of just 26, it wasn’t an easy decision to leave. Naas had gone through a seriously progressive period under Ryan’s guidance and had showcased itself further as a top class track by taking a number of high-profile Curragh fixtures during the revamp at HQ.

There was an ambition to keep pushing forward, with the previously outrageous goal of hosting a Group 1 race all of a sudden looking attainable. But this opportunity, namely the chance to make an impact on an international level, was simply too good to turn down.

“It’s funny how time just passes by so quickly,” Ryan reflected on a Zoom call this week. “I obviously wasn’t looking to run out of Naas, but I’d been there for 13 years and I began thinking that maybe it was time for a new challenge.

“I went out to Riyadh to meet Prince Bandar in late February of 2019, we went through a few bits, he was happy and I was happy and that’s how it began. It was with a heavy heart that I handed in my notice to Dermot Cantillon but this opportunity was just something completely new.

“It was an opportunity to stretch myself, to see how deeper I could go in the tank to produce things. To be given the lead on the Saudi Cup in particular, the scale of that, you’re trying to make an impact on a world level. That is major.”

World’s richest race

The Saudi Cup became the world’s richest horse race when its inception was announced at a launch party in New York in 2019. The idea came from the directors of the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia (JCSA) and has been steered by HRH Prince Bandar bin Khalid al Faisal.

A prize fund of $20 million has the nine-furlong contest comfortably clear of races like Dubai World Cup and the Everest. The race is placed in the calendar appoximately four weeks after the Pegasus World Cup and four weeks before the Dubai World Cup, designed to fit into a programme for the world’s best to take in all three contests.

There is also a significant undercard that holds a number of $1 million-plus races. Today the Ado McGuinness-trained Harry’s Bar will run in the Dirt Sprint, worth €1.24 million. Jessica Harrington runs Barbados is in the Red Sea Turf Handicap (€2.07 million), Willie Mullins runs True Self in the Neom Turf Cup (€830,000) and McGuinness has Saltonstall in the same race.

All the races are free to enter and free to run in, and shipment of horses is arranged and paid for by the JCSA, who also pay for stables, fodder, veterinary fees and farrier, and arrange payment for flights and accommodation for connections of the runners.

There is no doubt about it, the Saudis mean business. With big money surely comes a pressure to deliver.

“Strangely, I don’t feel the pressure,” Ryan says. “Maybe that’s because I’m a foreigner and maybe there is pressure among the Saudis, I don’t know. But for me it’s been a privilege to be in the role, not least with the calibre of horses travelling here.

“Ultimately a race is a race. The horse comes into the parade ring, the jockey gets up, they go down to the start and the best one comes home in front, mostly. When you’re talking about these big massive projects, I think you have to keep it that simple and just make sure it’s done to a very good standard.”

Given the whole Saudi Cup project and Ryan’s role is a start from scratch, it is an ever evolving position, not least with the way of the world over the last 12 months. At the beginning of his first year in the position, he divided his time by directing things from his home in Straffan, Co Kildare, travelling to big racing events around the world and basing himself in Riyadh.

“I wouldn’t be one for titles, but director of strategy and international racing is the title they’ve given me,” he explains. “That has been very much centred around getting the Saudi Cup up and running.

“They built a fabulous facility here maybe 17 or 18 years ago but they probably forgot to use it, for the manner that it was built. By way of example, for 2020, we got the hospitals up and running, we got a turf track up from scratch, we got the quarantine stables running – they were built brilliantly but never used. There’s a beautiful clubhouse here that is now used as a base for people when they’re on site.

“We’re very mindful that these events are run at a certain level, so there’s a certain level of delivery – a Breeders’ Cup, an Arc, a Melbourne Cup, a Hong Kong meeting in December. We had to come from almost zero to that level in the first year, whereas you take the likes of a Breeders’ Cup, they’ve had 35-plus years to hone their offering and build their team to deliver in the very successful way that they do. That was probably the biggest challenge of year one, to get to that standard, and not break the club in half trying to do it because we had to ramp it up so much.

“When the meeting was announced in 2019, people thought ‘Yeah, they’ll run a good dirt race out there, the surface there is pretty good, it makes sense.’ Then we announced that we were going to run turf races on a track that hadn’t been built yet and we organised a jockey challenge on the Friday and the whole thing turned into a two-day bonanza.

“I think there was a sneaky feeling out there from people in the industry that this is not possible – these guys can’t come from there to there in one year. They’ll bite off more than they can chew. It was a sense of achievement to even get that done in year one and put Saudi Arabia on the world racing map.”

Tourism

The Saudi Cup event originated from the Saudi 2030 Vision unveiled five years ago and is one of a group of sporting events part designed to stimulate tourism into a country which has never been far from criticism from western nations for various treatments, most notably its record on human and women’s rights.

In recent years, there have been reports of progress made in the country, even within international media circles and many will point to the first running of the Saudi Cup as a point of progress.

In the jockey challenge, seven women made up half of the competitors and won two of the four races: New Zealand’s Lisa Allpress and Sybille Vogt from Switzerland.

“That wasn’t in any way lost on us, especially given the cultural transformation that the country is undertaking at the moment,” Ryan asserts. “Genuinely, people here couldn’t believe what was happening, that women number one could ride at all and number two could compete equally on a level footing with the men. To have two lady winners in the first year of the jockey challenge was excellent.”

There were seven women riders in yesterday’s jockey challenge again and Hollie Doyle will ride Extra Elusive in the big race tonight.

While last year’s inaugural meeting went off without a hitch, it will be a source of frustration to the backers of the meeting that Jason Servis, the trainer of Maximum Security, who took the Saudi Cup, became indicted on charges of using performance-enhancing drugs. As of yet, the prize money of the race has yet to be paid out to connections of the horse as the JCSA conduct their own investigation.

That was out of the organising team’s hands. Importantly, the race and the undercard today look as strong as they could be given the current climate and Ryan says year two is about consolidation. There will be no crowds at the track due to Covid restrictions, but there could still be 1,000 people there.

Saudi Arabia isn’t a stranger to an epidemic given it has had to deal with outbreaks of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in the last decade. Ryan says the country has been stringent with lockdown measures, with current local reports of 300 Covid-19 cases a day, a miniscule amount from a population of 35 million. All participants attending King Abdulaziz Racetrack this week needed a negative 72-hour pre-travel Covid test and there is also a testing centre on site there to test everyone every three days.

The country’s strictness on Covid was illustrated yesterday when news emerged that American-based rider Umberto Rispoli could not travel into the country due to a slight change in the timing of when visitors can have a negative test.

Owners are welcome but understandably not many have made the trip, and that is also the case for a number of trainers like John Gosden, Bob Baffert and Jessica Harrington. But significantly the horses are here and Ryan says that is hugely important for the event now and for the future.

Given this will be the second renewal of the meeting, the Saudis hope a lot of the races will hold group class next year and that would be a significant step forward.

“At the moment, Saudi Arabia is currently a Part III nation in the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities blue book,” Ryan explains. “We’d like to get to Part II and then eventually over time hit the Part I status, the same as Ireland, the UK, France, US, etc. ... There’s a long term goal to make racing a substantial industry here.

“If you look at how last year’s races rated, you could only be positive. We hated the thought that it might end up a situation where horses might have to be primed at the wrong time of the year (to race at the Saudi Cup meeting) and their season tapers off after that but literally in every nation they went back to, they excelled.

“All the Japanese went back home and won their Group 1s. All the Americans were pretty successful. We even ended up with Joseph’s horse (Twilight Payment) winning the Melbourne Cup after being here.

“The races have rated unbelievably well and it seems to be a trip that a horse can make, give their best and then go home and be set for the season maybe. We’d like to think that it was partly because of the very good effort that’s made with the horse’s flights, we can get them from the airport to the track within an hour of the plane stopping. Then we have the facilities here that put the horse’s welfare to the centre. The grooms have been happy.”

So elsewhere in Saudia Arabia, what is the racing like, what is the ambition?

“In fairness, while you could say the Saudi Cup is the catalyst to supercharge the racing scene here, outside of it, there has already been a fairly determined effort over the last few years,” Ryan explains.

“The club currently runs racing at two venues. Riyadh is the winter venue and Taif, which is uniquely a summer venue given it is at altitude. There are about 70 fixtures between the two tracks. There’s work going on to encourage some of the privately owned regional tracks to come in under the umbrella of the JCSA to become an official part of the system.

“I’d imagine in three or four years time, you could have 10 tracks, 300 fixtures and a more aligned strategy with Bahrain and Dubai in particular, in a similar way to the Irish, French and British patterns that are somewhat aligned.”

Irish opportunity

Ryan says that developing the breeding sector will probably be the next area of focus but admits it will be a challenge, with a very hot climate making a harsh environment for rearing young stock and the traditional stallion business system perhaps not compatible with Saudi Arabian society.

They will monitor how things develop but importing horses into the country is likely to remain a prominent strategy and that is positive news for the Irish racing industry. Ryan agrees: “Absolutely this is an opportunity for the Irish market. Mick Halford is increasingly selling a lot of horses here.

“There is a market here for the right type of horse, rated in the mid 80s to low 90s or above in some cases. The appetite for quality is increasing and they can see now the benefit of investing in that type of animal.

“You have a dirt track here and the consensus is that Irish-breds go unbelievably well in it. There’s a couple of horses here who have done well. Krispen is a good example – he was rated 70 when he was with Tim Doyle back home and he’s rated in the mid 90s and races in the Turf Sprint on Saturday.”

This evening’s action might be out of season for some racing fans but you can’t argue with the quality on show in Riyadh. The main event takes place at 5.40pm Irish time and sees American stars Charlatan, Knicks Go and Mishriff, ridden by David Egan, among its main contenders.

If you build it they will come and $20 million helps as well. Having shown serious ambition at Naas, Tom Ryan has found a perfect platform in a racing nation determined to gain ground globally.

Regarding his future, he concluded: “After today, we’ll do the same as we did last year after the first Saudi Cup. We’ll sit down and see where we want to go with it.

“As long as everybody is happy on both sides, we’ll continue. There’s plenty of road to move into and lots to be done and it’s just a case of trying the right way to keep everything improved.”