Recent Dubai World Cup Winners

The Dubai World Cup, the final and most important race of Dubai World Cup night, is just a few days away. Saturday’s contest will feature some of the world’s best thoroughbreds. Let’s take a look at the 3 most-recent winners.

California Chrome 2016

Owned by Perry Martin and Steve Coburn, this incredible horse was sired by Lucky Pulpit. The chestnut is the most-successful racehorse of all-time, in terms of earnings won.

California Chrome’s long list of important wins includes the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, Awesome Again Stakes, Pacific Classic, San Diego Handicap, San Pasqual Stakes, Hollywood Derby, Santa Anita Derby, San Felipe Stake, Graduation Stakes, California Cup Derby and the King Glorious Stakes.

The following honours have been bestowed upon him, on at least one occasion;

American Horse of the Year, American Champion Older Dirt Male Horse, American Champion Three-Year-Old Male Horse, California-bred Horse of the Year, Champion Three-year-old California-bred male, Champion Cal-bred turf horse and Champion California-bred Older Male.

His fans even have a particular name – ‘Chromies’ and he retains a huge following, even though he has now retired to stud. He won the 2016 renewal by almost 4 lengths.

Prince Bishop 2015

This Irish-bred horse began his career in France and won the Prix du Prince d’Orange and Prix du Conseil de Paris, as a 3-year-old. Thereafter, he was based at Meydan although occasionally returned to Europe for particular races.

Owned by Sheikh Mohammed and trained by Andre Fabre, the gelding has also won the Floodlit Stakes, September Stakes, Al Maktoum Challenge, Round 2 and the Al Maktoum Challenge, Round 3.

Prince Bishop is the only Champion to have been aged 8 or more, when winning. What’s even more-impressive is that he was up against California Chrome, along with several other outstanding horses.

He was slowly away, but made excellent progress around the final bend and overtook California Chrome with 300 metres to go and then asserted to win by almost 3 lengths.

William Buick was on-board and later said “I don’t go numb very often but I can’t explain what I’m feeling right now. He has a very unorthodox way of racing so I took him out of the kickback in the back and when I got onto California Chrome’s tail, he picked up the bridle and ran on well in the end. He likes the surface now that he has the experience, he is better than he was. This is just nuts.”

African Story 2014

Although originally trained in France, this Pivotal-sired gelding was British-bred. He’s another of Sheikh Mohammed’s, although both Saeed bin Suroor and Andre Fabre trained him.

African Story was kept off the track, as a 2-year-old. It wasn’t until the Autumn of his Classic campaign that he first tasted competitive action – when he won a maiden at Saint-Cloud.

He remained in France until the beginning of his 5-year-old campaign, when he was moved to Dubai. There he won both the Burj Nahaar and Godolphin Mile, before winning the Dubai World Cup as a 6-year-old.

Silvestre de Sousa was in the saddle and he started the race as a 12/1 shot. African story raced prominently, although not at the head of affairs and got his nose in front early in the straight. The surprise winner set a new track-record of 2:01.61.

“It’s an amazing feeling and he just proved he’s the best. He was very unlucky here last time when he banged his head in the stalls, but he has proved he’s the boy”, de Sousa said later.

He retired on exactly the same day as Prince Bishop, in 2015. Saeed bin Suroor paid tribute to them both, saying “They were very tough and reliable racehorses… they could adapt quickly to their environment no matter where in the world they were taken to race.”