Exciting prospect Zeus Olympios wins at Newmarket

Sheikh Obaid's influence as owner and breeder

By John Ingles

Horse Racing

Tue December 30, 2025 · 8h ago

John Ingles looks back on the racing career of a man who won the Derby and Melbourne Cup and bred top stallion Dubawi.

Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum’s colours – yellow, with the three black spots – have become one of the most familiar sets of silks seen on British racecourses in recent seasons, as well as one of the most successful. This will be the seventh successive year that Sheikh Obaid's name will feature among the top ten owners in Britain by prize money. He was third in 2022, runner-up to his cousin Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation in 2024 and will be fifth this year when his earnings will once again top the two million pound mark.

It’s a shade ironic, therefore, that Sheikh Obaid’s biggest win came a lot earlier when he was still very much a small-scale owner, certainly compared with the huge strings amassed by Sheikh Mohammed and his brothers Hamdan and Maktoum Al Maktoum by the end of the twentieth century. Both the still-new Godolphin operation and Sheikh Hamdan were doubly represented in the 1998 Derby. Sheikh Hamdan’s pair were among the outsiders whereas the Godolphin representatives included the favourite Cape Verdi, the 1000 Guineas winner just the third filly to contest the Derby in fifty years.

However, it was Godolphin’s other runner, the Dante runner-up City Honours, who was involved in a tight finish but denied by just a head by Sheikh Obaid’s 20/1 shot High-Rise, trained by Luca Cumani and ridden by Olivier Peslier. High-Rise was one of just five horses who ran for Sheikh Obaid in Britain that season. It would be another twenty years before Sheikh Mohammed would see his Godolphin colours finally triumph in the Derby with Masar in 2018.

The Derby was High-Rise’s fourth win from as many starts – he had won the Lingfield Derby Trial beforehand – and in his two remaining races at three he went on to finish an excellent length second to Godolphin’s Swain in the King George (a career best effort, earning him a top-class rating of 130) and then seventh in the Arc. Illustrating further Sheikh Obaid’s minor place in the wider Maktoum operation at the time, rather than the major owner in his own right that he would become, High-Rise was himself moved into the Godolphin team with Saeed bin Suroor at the end of his three-year-old season. He finished third in the Japan Cup at four and gained his only win after Epsom in a listed event in Dubai at five.

READ: George Boughey on the death of Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum

However, High-Rise wasn’t Sheikh Obaid’s only classic winner in 1998. Stablemate Zomaradah began her three-year-old campaign winning a maiden at Brighton, but the following month landed the Oaks d’Italia which was still a Group 1 at the time. Zomaradah also won the Grade 2 E. P. Taylor Stakes in Canada at three and three more races at four, including Group 2 contests in Ireland (Royal Whip) and Italy (Premio Lydia Tesio) before a close third in the first running of the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf.

Sheikh Obaid was the breeder, as well as owner, of both High-Rise and Zomaradah and the two were related as High-Rise was a half-brother to Zomaradah’s dam. Interestingly, High-Rise and Zomaradah had appeared as lots 699 and 700 in the Tattersalls Autumn Horses In Training Sale catalogue when they were still unraced two-year-olds. Fortunately, in view of what they went on to achieve for their breeder, both were withdrawn!

While High-Rise didn’t set the world alight as a stallion, firstly in Japan and later siring jumpers in Ireland, the same certainly couldn’t be said of Zomaradah as a broodmare. She was responsible for Sheikh Obaid’s most important legacy to racing as among her seven winning foals was one of the best stallions this century, her first foal Dubawi, also a high-class racehorse whose wins included the Irish 2000 Guineas and Prix Jacques le Marois.

Dubawi, coming from the only crop of Sheikh Mohammed’s outstanding colt Dubai Millennium, was taken straight into the Godolphin set-up but most of Zomaradah’s other foals, including Lancashire Oaks winner Emirates Queen, raced in Sheikh Obaid’s own colours. The family was still producing good winners for their owner-breeder in 2025, with Emirates Queen’s son Royal Champion winning the Winter Derby, York Stakes and Bahrain International Trophy this year. Another of Zomaradah’s grandsons, Royal Rhyme, won the Brigadier Gerard Stakes in 2024 and was third in that season’s Champion Stakes.

Dubawi wins the Irish 2,000 Guineas

Despite his early success breeding and owning a Derby winner, Sheikh Obaid’s string remained modest in size for some time, yielding only a dozen winners at most per season until the last decade or so. In 2014, Sheikh Obaid had another colt in the High-Rise mould in Dubawi’s son Postponed, he too in training with Cumani - at least to begin with. While the later-developing Postponed didn’t contest the Derby, he did end his three-year-old campaign by winning the Great Voltigeur and the following season went one better than High-Rise had done at Ascot by winning the King George.

But just days after Postponed won his next race, the Prix Foy, Sheikh Obaid’s string, now numbering 35 horses with Cumani, was moved to fellow Newmarket trainer Roger Varian, with no explanation given at the time for the switch. It was therefore for Varian that Postponed enjoyed his most successful season at five, equalling High-Rise’s rating of 130 and winning the Dubai City of Gold (the same race High-Rise had won in Dubai but now a Group 2), the Dubai Sheema Classic, Coronation Cup and Juddmonte International.

Postponed winning at Epsom

It was in a post-race interview after Postponed’s win at York that his owner finally shed some light on his decision to remove his horses from Cumani’s care. ‘When I tell a trainer to do something, he has to listen to me, not do his own thing. I’m military. If I give someone an order, he has to take my order.’

Varian went on to train a second Coronation Cup winner for Sheikh Obaid, Defoe in 2019, but he too eventually met the same fate as Cumani, abruptly losing the ten horses he had trained for Sheikh Obaid in the summer of 2024.

While auction purchases like Postponed helped to swell Sheikh Obaid’s string, he found another excellent source of home-breds with his hugely successful broodmare Reem Three who had been a useful handicapper for Cumani. No fewer than eight of Reem Three’s foals earned Timeform ratings of more than 100, among them a couple of Group 1 winners in Queen Anne Stakes winner Tiple Time and Prix Jean Romanet winner Ajman Princess. In addition, Ostilio, Cape Byron, Third Realm and Captain Winters were four more of her foals successful in pattern or listed company.

Reem Three also had the distinction of being grandam of two Group 1 winners at Royal Ascot in 2024 in Sheikh Obaid’s colours when Inisherin, a son of Ajman Princess, won the Commonwealth Cup and Rosallion, out of Reem Three’s unraced daughter Rosaline, won the St James’s Palace Stakes. Both colts begin stallion careers in the New Year. Rosallion endured a frustrating season in 2025, but the St James’s Palace was his third Group 1 win for Richard Hannon after earlier successes in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere and Irish 2000 Guineas.

Sean Levey gives Rosallion a pat after his Royal Ascot win

Another of Sheikh Obaid’s most notable winners, Without A Fight, began his career in Newmarket with Simon & Ed Crisford for whom he won seven races, but went on to bigger things in his owner’s colours in Australia, completing the Caulfield Cup-Melbourne Cup double for Anthony & Sam Freedman. However, Sheikh Obaid ended his Australian racing interests earlier this year which has resulted in Henlein, a Group 1 runner-up down under, making the reverse journey to join Kevin Ryan.

While Sheikh Obaid still had horses in training in Newmarket in 2025, including unbeaten Royal Lodge Stakes winner Bow Echo with George Boughey, it was notable that a large part of his string became concentrated in the North in recent seasons, split between Ryan and fellow Yorkshire trainer Karl Burke. Besides those Royal Ascot winners Triple Time and Inisherin, the latter also winner of the Duke of York Stakes in May, Ryan also trained the likes of Sprint Cup winner Emaraaty Ana and Sun Chariot Stakes winner Fonteyn for Sheikh Obaid.

Burke owes much of his growing success in recent seasons to support from Sheikh Obaid and that was particularly evident in 2025 when, in addition to Royal Champion’s big wins, there was the Cambridgeshire victory of Boiling Point, two-year-old Hankelow winning the Autumn Stakes and the emergence of unbeaten three-year-old Zeus Olympios who looks a potentially high-class miler and perhaps the best prospect for keeping his late owner’s colours to the fore in 2026.

Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.

Like what you've read?