IT has been another superb year on the track for Godolphin. Sheikh Mohammed’s operation won 30 Group 1 races worldwide in 2018 and this year their top-level tally stands at 27 with the potential of a few more to come.

This level of success is reminiscent of Godolphin’s glory days with Daylami and Dubai Millennium in the 1990s and early 2000s. But Godolphin lost its way in the intervening years. What started out as an elite squad of Group 1 performers swelled into an almost unmanageable global racing and breeding behemoth, still churning out winners but clearly underperforming, given the resources invested.