When was Godolphin founded?

When was Godolphin founded? Much in the same way that if we talked of real money slots online, a few big name casino sites would come to mine, the same applies to the field of racing. Of course, Godolphin is the global thoroughbred breeding and racing operation founded by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who became Ruler of Dubai in 2006, following the death of his elder brother, Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Godolphin was named after the ‘Godolphin Arabian’, one of the three foundation sires from which all thoroughbreds are descended.

In the winter of 1992/93, Sheikh Mohammed, Sheikh Maktoum and their two brothers took the hitherto unprecendented step of moving their horses to Al Quoz, Dubai where, even in winter, the average daytime temperature is a comfortably warm 25ºC. By 1994, Godolphin had become an international operation, famously winning its first Classic, the Oaks, with Balanchine, and two years later, in 1996, became champion owner in Britain for the first time.

Of course, the Maktoum family was well known to the British racing public long before the foundation of Godolphin. Indeed, Sheikh Mohammed and his elder brother Sheikh Hamdan, who established Shadwell Racing in 1981, had already been champion owner in Britain eight times between them before the first-ever Godolphin runner, Cutwater, won at Nad Al Sheba, Dubai on Christmas Eve, 1992. It really was a worldwide operation. While some of us may play the best au online casinos via our devices, these fellows most globetrotting and taking the racing world by storm the centrepiece of their operations.

What is Tapeta?

Tapeta is a synthetic racing surface, akin to Polytrack, which consists of a trademarked mixture of silica sand, wax and rubber fibres laid to a depth of several inches above a tough, woven fabric membrane or a layer of asphalt. Tapeta is specifically designed to mimic the root structure of turf and, as such, produces a unbiased racing surface, which produces little or no kickback and copes well with wet weather.

Tapeta was the brainchild of Michael Dickinson – best known in Britain for saddling the first five finishers in the 1983 Cheltenham – who set about creating a kinder, more forgiving alternative to dirt on which to train his horses. He designed and laid the first version of Tapeta at his purpose-built Tapeta Farm in 1997 and, in 2005, formed Tapeta Footings Inc, which now has offices on both sides of the Atlantic.

Continued research and development has led to numerous iterations of Tapeta, which has been widely adopted by racecourses worldwide, including Wolverhampton, Newcastle and, most recently, Southwell in Britain. Martin Cruddace, Chief Executive of Arena Racing Company (ARC), which owns Southwell Racecourse, said that replacing the existing Fibresand surface with Tapeta represented ‘another significant step forward’.

Of the Derby and the Oaks, which is the older Classic?

Given the value of a Classic-winning colt to global racing and breeding powerhouses, such as Coolmore and Godolphin, it should come as no real surprise that, in recent years, the second fillies’ Classic, the Oaks, has been increasingly overshadowed by the Derby. The fact that the Derby is worth £1,125,000 in guaranteed prize money, whereas the Oaks is worth just £375,000, is indicative of their current standings.

However, far from being an afterthought, the Oaks is, in fact, the older – albeit only slightly – of the Epsom Classics. The Oaks was founded, in its current guise, by Edward Smith-Stanley, Twelfth Earl of Derby, in 1779 and named after his residence in nearby Carshalton. Smith-Stanley won the inaugural running of the Oaks and, during the subsequent celebration, he and Charles Bunbury, Chairman of the Jockey Club, came up with the idea for a similar race, open to colts and fillies, which they co-founded, as the Derby, in 1780. Until 1784, the Derby was run over the ‘last mile of the course’, before being extended to a mile and a half. It is worth noting that neither the Oaks nor the Derby were dubbed ‘Classics’ until shortly after the inaugural running of the 1,000 Guineas in 1814.

Where, and when, did Richard Johnson ride his first and last winners?

At the time of his shock retirement in April, 2021, Richard ‘Dicky’ Johnson had ridden 3,819 winners, a figure surpassed only by his great friend and rival Sir Anthony McCoy. Johnson rode his first winner, Rusty Bridge, trained by his mother, Susan, in a hunters’ chase at Hereford on April 30, 1994. He won the Conditional Jockeys’ Championship in 1995/96 and, over the next two decades, finished runner-up in the National Hunt Jockeys’ Championship, behind McCoy, on no fewer than 16 occasions. McCoy retired in April, 2015 and Johnson finally emerged from his shadow to win the jockeys’ title four years running, in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Interestingly, on the day of his retirement, at Newton Abbot, Johnson gave up his last scheduled ride on the card, such that his last actual ride was Brother Tedd, on whom he’d won McCoy’s final race at Sandown Park six years previously. His last winner, though, was Camprond, fittingly trained by Philip Hobbs – to whom he had been first jockey since 1999 – in a maiden hurdle at Taunton on March 23, 2021. In his 27-year career, Johnson took over 20,000 rides.

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