Saudi Cup, Panthalassa wins the richest horse race in the world – Corriere.it

For horseracing purists, for whom only the Epsom Derby or the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe can forge galloping legends, the Saudi Cup technically remains a sideshow in the desert even if Mohammed Bin Salman’s regime , always in search of reputational cosmetics even in sport, made it the richest race in the world by hanging 20 million dollars on the finish line of 1,800 meters in sand at the Ryad racecourse: a quadruple haul of the European record prize money of 5 million sponsored by Qatar’s rivals right on the Arc de Triomphealmost double the 12 million of the World Cup boasting of the Dubai cousins, and even equal (in this single race) to a large part of all the prizes of all the races of all the racetracks throughout the year in Italy.

After all, by now the dissociation of the international gallop from reality, and sometimes from rationality, is such as to make it possible that recently 2.5% of the thoroughbred Flightline, champion of the 2022 US season, was sold for 4.6 million, with us valuing the stallion at 186 million dollars, therefore as much as Cristiano Ronaldo’s two-year contract with the Saudi team of Al-Nassr. And indeed this auction seems almost sensible compared to the 2.6 million spent by the 48-year-old volcanic Saudi businessman Amr Zedan to buy the colt Arabia Knight even before his debut, only because in training he would have galloped 200 meters in 9”4 .

So all of these grandpa cups invented by the sheikhs in February-March of the lethargy of the gallop in Europe, they are often looted by Japanese or American horses, not of the very first rank but still rocky globetrotters. And indeed yesterday evening in the Saudi Cup Japan did en plein by placing four horses in the first five places with the success of the six-year-old male Panthalassawho not by chance always on the sand and always in this season had already won the Dubai Turf Cup at the Meydan racecourse last year.

Son of the successful Japanese stallion Lord Kanaloa, but also with a European side deriving from the Irish maternal grandfather Montjeu who won the Arc de Triomphe in 1999, Panthalassa against 12 competitors shot from the starting cages like a cannonball and then led from one end to the other of the 1,800 meters: but if at the finish line he saved himself very little from the flight outside his American rival Country Grammer, very unfortunate still second like a year ago , Panthalassa must after all thank the not very inspired interpretation (on the American horse) of Lanfranco Dettori, the 52-year-old Italian super jockey who would have liked to start the 2023 tour of all the main grand prix of the world here in the best possible way before retiring to end of the season, and who instead didn’t have time to grab the escape of the equally seasoned (47 years old) Japanese jockey Yutaka Yoshida.

A lot of entertainment, in short: but even those blinded by the benefits of the sumptuous organization of the Saudi Cup have to deal with the fact that the 2022 graduate, Emblem Road, in France then he didn’t even place himself in a jog at the peripheral Vichy racecourse; and that yesterday two side races (but both worth 1.5m) were won by horses who last year finished last in the Arc de Triomphe, and the other in the Sussex Stakes away from the English champion European Baaeed.