John Pricci

This is not personal. Neither does it have anything to do with business. As far as I’m concerned, greed hasn’t been good since Gordon Gecko was carted off to jail for insider trading. But what I do object to is the masquerade that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, owner of a likely champion named Bernardini, is some wonderful kind of new millennium sportsman.

Certainly it’s more than permissible for Sheikh Mohammed to try recouping some of the billion dollars he’s invested in horseflesh since he got into the racing business a few decades ago. The key word here is business. But, hey, I’d be more than a little concerned about the citizens of the United Arab Emirates if he didn’t concern himself with such bottom line issues.

Clearly, no one can question Sheikh Mohammed’s generosity and compassion for his fellow man following the events of 9/11, as well as the other charitable gestures he has made and continues to make. Doubtless, they are heart felt and sincere, but we’d be less than candid if we didn’t acknowledge that it’s good PR, too.

When we wrote a column some months ago suggesting that it wasn’t easy to root for people who use obscene amounts of money to buy success in a game meant to be fraught with uncertainty, we were accused of promoting a kind of class warfare based on xenophobic chauvinism. As an American horseplayer familiar with the humbling nature of the game, I was supposed to be better than that.

In the run-up to the Breeders’ Cup, Washington Post columnist Andrew Beyer wrote a piece that inspired a post-Classic tirade by one of the Sheikh’s advisers in which he called the piece an example of “trash journalism” and Beyer a know-nothing about the generosity of the man. Since Beyer doesn’t work for the Sheikh I assume that much is true.

It neither was surprising when members of a group of Kentucky horsemen and breeders wrote editorials in defense of the Sheikh’s profligate spending, as if the river of cash he pumps into horse sales was not the tide that lifted all equine boats. Apparently there’s no interest like self interest.

Perhaps least curious is how people in the sport continue to react to criticism in knee jerk fashion, failing to remember that negative publicity is better than no publicity at all in an age when column inches devoted to racing are disappearing faster than the newspapers themselves.

If Sheikh Mohammed were a sportsman in the manner of the Phipps family, or a Thomas Evans or a Mary Lou Whitney, Bernardini and Henny Hughes would not have been retired 48 hours after Breeders’ Cup XXIII became a part of history. But really, wasn’t that always the plan?

On Tuesday of Breeders’ Cup week, Internet news service Equidaily.com published a report that the Sheikh’s Darley Web site indicated that Bernardini would stand at stud in 2007. The following day, Darley spokespersons said that that decision had not been finalized and on Wednesday the Internet item was gone.

In another slip-of-the-tongue moment that week, it was learned that the sensational fast filly Dubai Escapade was entered in the Sprint only as insurance, in case something happened to stablemate Henny Hughes, the way Discreet Cat, the only horse ever to defeat Uruguayan Horse of the Year Invasor, was pre-entered as Bernardini insurance. At entry time, Dubai Escapade was declared from the race with an “ankle injury.”

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

The thing is the retirement of Henny Hughes and Bernardini doesn’t make perfect business sense, insurance premiums notwithstanding. What did Henny Hughes really prove in a two-year, 10-race campaign? He finished second in the only three Grade 1 races he ran in at 2. This year, he defeated a total of 15 rivals in a three-race season, only two more than he would face in the Sprint.

Henny Hughes virtually lost all chance when he stumbled at the start of the Sprint, the deal sealed when he was unable to handle the cuppy track. These were truly legitimate excuses but neither fans nor future breeders can know how really good he is, what he’s truly worth as a sire of future champions. And would a true sportsman leave such challenging questions unanswered?

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