A day removed from the death of Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum at the age of 75, Willie Carson-his former retained rider who rode many of his great stars of the late 1980s and 1990s-remembered his former boss as “a gentleman, a really nice man.”
Carson recalled on Sky Sports Racing how the appointment with Sheikh Hamdan pulled him back from the brink of retirement.
“The lease was not going to be renewed for [trainer Dick Hern's] West Ilsley stables and Dick was a bit taken aback by that and the first thing he said was, 'I'm retiring.' I thought, 'it looks like I'd better retire as well.' That was just coming into our minds at that time, but after riding a piece of work at Newbury racecourse, Angus Gold, Sheikh Hamdan's racing manager, was there and I first mentioned–it might have been a bit of a joke, but maybe not–'why don't you ask Hamdan if I could be his retained jockey?' And that's how it happened.”
Carson enjoyed a dream run at the turn of the decade as the raceday pilot of the likes of Nashwan, Dayjur, Erhaab and Salsabil. He recalled Nashwan's victory in the 1989 G1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond S., the horse's fourth consecutive Group 1 win of the season.
“We made [the King George] into a sprint that day because he had those four Group 1 races in three months and he shouldn't have run in the race because he was tired and he never really recovered from that. But what a magnificent mover he was.”
Of Dayjur, one of the best-ever sprinters, Carson added, “[Dayjur] was the fastest I've ever ridden and I would say the fastest anyone has ever ridden. When the track record was broken at York by his own horse [Battaash in the 2019 Nunthorpe], by a tenth of a second, straight away Hamdan said, 'Dayjur had a headwind.' He didn't want anything taken away from Dayjur.”
“He was a man who enjoyed not just winning races, he enjoyed the breeding side–he enjoyed knowing about his horses,” Carson added. “If there was a really important piece of work before a big race, he'd be ringing up from Dubai to ask how it went, what your feelings were and how the horse was. He was interested in the horse. What a brain he had–sharp, but a very compassionate man.
“It's not just a major loss–it's a gigantic loss. People in the racing industry will be very sad to hear of his passing, he was possibly one of the biggest well-thought of names worldwide. He would try to buy the best horses for his trainers and he was very loyal to anyone who started training for him. He always kept going back and giving them more yearlings.”
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