DUBAI MILLENIUM

Dubai Millennium
b h by Seeking the Gold out of Colorado Dancer (by Shareef Dancer)
Foaled:  20 March 1996
Races: 10, Wins: 9
Breeder: Sheikh Mohammed
Trainer:  Saeed bin Suroor
Owner: Godolphin

Dubai Millenium's true potential will never be known.   Foaled in 1996, by Seeking the Gold, and bred by Sheikh Mohammed, the exciting colt was only beaten once in his ten outings.

Although initially called Yaazer, the colt's name was changed to Dubai Millennium by Sheikh Mohammed with the 2000 Dubai World Cup in mind before he ran as a two-year-old for David Loder.  Dubai Millennium raced just once as a two year old, winning a Yarmouth maiden, before victories at Doncaster and Goodwood en route to the 1999 Derby.  The Derby was his only defeat, well beaten behind Oath, before bouncing back with Group 2 and then Group 1 wins in France.

In September 1999, the colt took the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot.  He was not seen again until taking the Listed Maktoum Challenge in Dubai.  This was his prep race for his most famous win, the 2000 Dubai World Cup.

Back in England he took the Prince of Wales Stakes at Ascot, and rumours of a duel with Monjeu were rife.  However, Sheikh Mohammed's dream of setting up one of racing's greatest head-to-heads was left in tatters when tragedy struck. Dubai Millennium fractured a leg on the Newmarket gallops. The shock news came on the day Godolphin's jockey Frankie Dettori, one of the horse's greatest fans, made a successful riding comeback.

"Dubai Millennium sustained a lateral condylar fracture of his right hind leg when working on the Limekilns at Newmarket this morning and will be retired to stud," said a statement. "The brilliant racehorse will require surgery and internal fixation for this serious injury, which sadly means that his racing days are over."

Dubai Millennium ended his racing days with a record of nine victories from 10 starts and £2,752,610 in prize-money.
His only defeat came when ninth behind Oath in last year's Derby over a trip he found beyond him.

The multiple Group 1 winner will stand at Sheikh Mohammed's Dalham Hall Stud. Ironically, only a day earlier, the Sheikh had thrown down his challenge to Tabor proposing a $6 million match between the star colts.  But just as public excitement was starting to gather momentum, it was halted with the dramatic news.

According to racing manager Simon Crisford, the injury came to light as the four-year-old, who had "worked impressively" under Anthony Procter, was returning to Moulton Paddocks, the Godolphin yard at Newmarket.  It was the second serious setback for Godolphin in just over a week following the retirement of dual Ascot Gold Cup winner Kayf Tara, also as a result of an injury.

Sheikh Mohammed, saddened by the premature end of the career of his favourite horse, said: "You can wait 20 years and never get a horse like this. I've never seen or owned a horse like him, the way he trains, the way he looks. He is quite outstanding."

Dubai Millennium's retirement tragically lasted only one season  In April 2001 he was struck down with grass sickness in April 2001 and after every effort to save his life, the battle was lost on 29th April.  Godolphin's European horse of the year in 2000 died on Sunday night at the age of five.

Owner Sheikh Mohammed's bloodstock adviser John Ferguson said: "Dubai Millennium became uncomfortable on Sunday and it was evident that a third emergency surgery was necessary."

The surgery was carried out by Huw Neal and Dr Dan Hawkins at Greenwood, Ellis Partners in Newmarket.

But Ferguson explained: "It soon became clear that there were complications of the intestinal tract that were inoperable.  His prospects were hopeless and on humane grounds Dubai Millennium was not allowed to recover from the anaesthetic.  The horse was the most marvellous patient and everyone who knew him is very sad to see him go."

Dubai Millennium will be buried in the stallion graveyard at Sheikh Mohammed's Dalham Hall Stud - where he was foaled and also stood as a stallion.   He will lie next to his maternal grandfather, Shareef Dancer.

One small consolation.  Dubai Millennium's dam, Colorado Dancer, is due to produce a foal by Seeking the Gold who will be the full brother or sister tothe departed superstar.

FAREWELL TO MILLENNIUM

By Dave Ord, Sporting Life

No sooner are racing's spirits lifted by Saturday's titanic tussle between Edredon Bleu and Fadalko than we are back in the pits of despair.

Dubai Millennium died on Sunday night.

A flagship for the Godolphin team and the apple Sheikh Mohammed's eye, the five-year-old has been engulfed in a battle with grass sickness since late last week.

The fight was lost.

A winner of nine of his ten races, the only defeat behind Oath in the Vodafone Derby of 1999, Dubai Millennium more than lived up the hype.

Re-named by his owner because of a conviction he could win the 2000 Dubai World Cup, the prophecy was fulfilled in stunning fashion at Nad Al Sheba.

Taken to the front by Frankie Dettori from the start he simply ran his rivals into the ground, slamming nearest pursuer Behrens by six lengths.

His destiny was fulfilled.

Sadly injury was to curtail his career after one more run.

He bowed out in style, again taking to the front and breaking the heart of top French colt Sendawar as he bounded away with the Prince of Wales's Stakes at Royal Ascot.

A leg problem surfaced as he was being prepared for a potential clash with Montjeu and stud duties beckoned.

Where he stands among the legends of the turf's greats is open to question.

His was a career in many ways typical of the modern-day champion.

He only had the one run at two, running away with a Yarmouth maiden and leading his then trainer David Loder to enthuse; “This is definitely a serious middle distance horse in the making. He had some smart entries but we've had a few problems getting him ready and things didn't quite work out. He's a very nice horse indeed."

Subsequent Group One winner Indian Lodge was trailing in his wake at the South Coast track and it wasn't long before Dubai Millennium was sporting the royal blue silks of Godolphin.

His three-year-old career started with facile success in a Doncaster conditions stakes before he swept from last to first on the bridle when taking the Predominate Stakes at Goodwood.

Epsom beckoned but for the only time in his career, he failed to fire.

Colty in the preliminaries and too free in the race, it was a day to forget.

Everything was back on track with victories in the Prix Eugene Adam and the Jaques le Marios (against proven milers at their optimum trip).

The horse had arrived in the major league.

He sluiced through the Ascot mud to annihilate a small field for the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and headed off for some winter sun with a blossoming reputation.

He warmed up for the World Cup with a fluent victory over Lear Spear.

And then the race on which his greatness rests.

The enduring image of Dubai Millennium will be the ease with which he destroyed the world's best.

With three furlongs to run he was in front, swinging off the steel as all behind resembled the varsity boat race crews.

It was breathtaking – a moment which still burns bright – it was then we began to believe.

One more run and the career was over.

He was undboubtedly champion - but there were gaps in his record.

No victories in the major British races, no King George, Eclipse, York's International, but then again that misses the point.

Here was a horse who was foaled to win the 2000 Dubai World Cup.

Mission accomplished.

Let's not forget the words of those closest to him.

Sheikh Mohammed: ”You can wait 20 years and never get a horse like this. He is a true champion and I have never seen or owned a horse like him, the way he trains, the way he looks. He is quite outstanding - there is no horse like this horse.”.

Godolphin racing manger Simon Crisford: ”The most remarkable thing about this horse is he is a brilliant champion on turf and dirt, I think he's a mile-10-furlong horse. When he got beaten in the Derby we were all mortified because we had such faith in him, but this race (Dubai World Cup) was always the long-term plan. Now he's a serious machine, a proper racehorse”

It was hoped he would pass on his greatness to his sons and daughters but tragically he had limited opportunities to do so.

So it is Dubai Millennium the racehorse we remember.

The sheer power he produced when in overdrive.

The night under the floodlights of Dubai he ruled the world.

It could be some time before we see his like again.



Postscript - from The Racing Post, 1st May 2000


LITTLE can we have known that when Seeking The Gold clambered on to the back of Colorado Dancer in a Kentucky breeding barn six years ago, surrounded and guided by seen-it-all stud hands whose job it was to ensure a worthwhile union, that such an inglorious event could yield such a spectacularly glorious result.

A mating between even the finest of racehorses comes with no guarantees. Yet the conception of Dubai Millennium was one of those occasions when Mother Nature’s dice threw up a sequence of sixes beyond the dreams of even the most successful of breeders.

Whatever it was splashing around in their gene pools—and pedigree buffs can come up with all sorts of theories, none of them cast-iron sureties—Seeking The Gold and Colorado Dancer somehow contrived to produce one of the finest racehorses the world has ever seen.

Throw them together 20 more times and they may not even produce a racehorse half as good as Dubai Millennium. That’s just the way it goes. For all the youthful exuberance and athleticism that young horses show, no-one can really be sure of their racing ability until they are in serious training. Once installed at David Loder’s Newmarket yard, Dubai Millennium, or Yaazer as he was then known, wasted little time in indicating to his trainer that he was a possessor of some serious talent.

So much so that Loder had no doubts about which horse would be best suited to the portentous name-change sought at the time by Sheikh Mohammed, who was looking for a horse to trailblaze his country’s name in a new millennium.

As the two men walked around evening stables, Loder pointed to Yaazer as the horse most likely to live up to the name Dubai Millennium—and didn’t he just?

Word was already out by the time Dubai Millennium made his two-year-old debut at Yarmouth, which he won at odds of 4-9. The Racing Post analysis of the race said the colt “simply destroyed” his rivals and could have won by more than ten lengths had Frankie Dettori chosen to do so.

Dubai Millennium made a surprisingly low-keyreappearance the following season in a conditions race at Doncaster on a Bank Holiday Monday. By now he was in the care of Godolphin, whose racing manager Simon Crisford warned that the race was very much “a fact-finding mission” for the colt.

Odds-on again, Dubai Millennium won the four-runner Doncaster Racecourse Sponsorship Club Conditions Stakes by nine lengths—and talk of the Derby soon started.  He was sent off the 5-1 favourite at Epsom on the back of another smooth success in the Predominate Stakes at Goodwood. His first three races had produced wins by an aggregate of 22½ lengths. The Derby was Dubai Millennium’s only day of disgrace. He behaved coltishly before the race and never really figured before finishing ninth behind Oath.

Dubai Millennium never ran again over 12 furlongs. His comeback race came over ten in the Group 2 Prix Eugene Adam at Maisons-Laffitte. Yet again he dominated the market, coupled at 7-10 in the betting with the Andre Fabre-trained State Shinto, who finished a three-length second to the Godolphin colt.

Fabre may well have become a little irritated by Dubai Millennium, whose next start was also in France, where he defeated the trainer’s duo Dansili and Slickly in Deauville’s Group 1 Prix Jacques Le Marois, forwhich he started favourite after the withdrawal of Sendawar because of testing ground.

The colt’s three-year-old career concluded in rain-soaked conditions when, with only three rivals in the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, he sauntered past Almushtarak to win by six lengths.

It was after this race that the superlatives began to flow, with Sheikh Mohammed, who had once claimed that Dubai Millennium had earned winter favouritism for the Derby on the strength of his name alone, now describing him as the best horse Godolphin had ever had.
   We weren’t to know it, but Dubai Millennium had only three races to go now—all of them worth savouring. His four-year-old debut came at Nad Al Sheba with a four-and-a-half-length defeatof Lear Spear, David Elsworth’s classy five-year-old, in round three of the Maktoum Challenge.

It was Dubai Millennium’s first race on dirt, yet he broke the track record over ten furlongs—the distance at which horses like Cigar, Singspiel and Silver Charm had been tested to the limit in much more competitive circumstances when they each won the Dubai World Cup. Dubai Millennium broke his own track record in that very race when, against a backdrop of a dark Dubai sky and the bright, man-made light of Nad Al Sheba, he turned a high-class race into a procession.

In its short history, the Dubai World Cup has built up a reputation as a catalyst for some special performances—but nothing, not even what those great horses mentioned above achieved, has matched the astonishing superiority of Dubai Millennium that night.  Leading after a furlong, he had his rivals beaten entering the straight. It was an awesome performance. Group 1 horses from around the world were made to look like lazy chasers on their umpteenth morning on the gallops.

With Dettori sidelined as a result of his horrific plane crash, Dubai Millennium was partnered by only the second jockey of his career when he won Royal Ascot’s Prince of Wales’s Stakes, his final race, under Jerry Bailey. Astonishingly, despite his performance in Dubai, it was the first time in his life that he did not start favourite, Sendawar taking that honour at 6-5.

It was the only honour the Aga Khan’s colt did take. Perhaps on any other occasion his class might haveallowed him to steal a ten-furlong championship race. Against Dubai Millennium it was a forlorn hope, and he faded into fourth with Sumitas and Beat All running on to take second and third, eight lengths and half a length behind the scintillating winner.

By now it was hard to argue with Sheikh Mohammed’s assertion that Dubai Millennium was the best horse he or anyone else had owned. Excitement was growing about a possible especially arranged $6 million match with Montjeu —and then disaster struck.

Dubai Millennium had to be retired after breaking his right hind leg on the gallops —just as Dettori was ready to return to ride him. Attention turned back to the breeding shed. Five years after his own conception, it was Dubai Millennium’s near-impossible task to try to produce horses better than himself.

Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley breeding operation pulled out all of the stops to see if he could, entering foal shares with the owners of hand-picked mares from around the world, flying the overseas ones to Newmarket free of charge.

By the time his illness struck, Dubai Millennium had covered all bar 18 of the 100 mares booked to him. You won’t be able to put a price on the foals those mares produce.



NEWS ON THE PROGENY OF DUBAI MILLENIUM JULY 2003

Dubai Millenium left behind him only 56 foals from the first and only season of covering which he did before his untimely death. Sheikh Mohammed sent his own best mares to him so many of the Dubai Millennium foals were already promised the luxury upbringing awarded to his horses on the lush pastures of Kildangan Stud in Ireland.

It was no surprise when Sheikh Mohammed who had bred Millennium and always said he was his favourite horse made very generous offers to those breeders who had possessed the wealth and the vision to send the outstanding racehorse a mare in his first season. He was successful in purchasing nearly all of them, but a few were not for sale at any price it seems.

Until now. The Agence Francaise Deauville Yearling Sale which takes place in August showed one in the catalogue, LOT 24, a bay colt to go under the hammer on the first session of the five day sales. The colt is being consigned from Eric Puerari's Haras des Capucines. He is the fifth foal of his well bred French dam, Prix Jacques le Marois winner Miss Satamixa. Miss Satamixa is by the Arc winner Linamix and she has produced Man O Desert, by Green Desert, to win in 2003. Miss Satamixa is a half-sister to the dams of Miss Caerleona a Grade 3 winner in the United States and to three Group 3 winners Manninamix, Mister Sicy, and Mister Riv.

But it seems likely now that the colt will not be sold in France due to a slight injury he has sustained which makes it impossible to have him ready by the date of that sale. Instead it is thought that he will come to Tattersalls Newmarket for the Houghton in October, in which he also has an entry.

There is another Dubai Millennium colt and a filly offered in the Houghton Sale. The filly is out of Cloelia, who is a half-sister to triple Group 1 producer Korveya, who was owned by the late Gerald Leigh and is the superstar dam of Bosra Sam and Hector Protector. Cloelia produced a colt by Rainbow Quest who was sold as a 2 year old in April 2003 at Tattersalls breeze-up sale to Fusaro Sekiguchi for 55,000gns. The colt is related to the Derby winner High Rise and Darley sire In The Wings as his dam High Spirited is a half sister of High Tern the dam of High Rise and also of High Hawk the dam of In The Wings. He is a half brother to two Group 2 and 3 winners in Amfortas and Legend Maker.

Some of the breeders who possess one of his yearlings will not have retained them to realise a large profit from sales, but to take their chance in their own silks on a racetrack. We will report on them here as their presence becomes known. It is believed that Lady Lloyd Webber has one at Watership Down Stud and that there is one at Woodcote Stud in Epsom.

Racing fans anxiously await sight of any of Dubai Millennium's offspring in the ring or on the track. It is expected that when they go through the ring they will attract an audience of many who are remembering a great racehorse and hoping that something left behind in this one crop will carry on his legacy sufficiently that he will not be forgotten. Those who will be bidding for them will include the crème de la crème of bloodstock agents and buyers, including of course Sheikh Mohammed himself.