There is plenty of Irish interest in the Saudi Cup festival this weekend, with the world's richest race among the contests taking place.
Trainers Joseph O'Brien, Johnny Murtagh and Tony Mullins all have runners at King Abdulaziz Racetrack in Riyadh, while Kildare jockey David Egan is aiming to win the Saudi Cup for the second year in a row.
But one of the key people involved in organising the prestigious global event is also an Irishman - Tipperary native Tom Ryan.
He is the Director of Strategy & International Racing at the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia having moved to the Middle East in 2019 to take up the role after 13 years working as the manager of Naas racecourse.
Speaking to The Irish Mirror ahead of the event, he explained: "We're there now. Like a team getting ready for an All-Ireland final, all we need is to do well on the day now.
"The country here is pretty much back to normal. We've been very lucky. We brought people from all over the world and we've had no positive cases, nobody feeling any way unwell so we're rolling now.
"We'll have 20,000 on both days. We're probably 95% sold-out now 48 hours out so it's very close to a full ticket. We're happy.
"This part of the world is a little bit interesting in that as well as improving the ability of running a horse racing event from an industry perspective at a higher level, the venue was built sort of 20 years ago for a small group of royalty I suppose to race against each other.
"It wasn't technically built to deal with a lot of people so we had to develop the site as well as the core infrastructure for the horses as well, but it's been a good challenge and a very interesting journey.
"I'm heading into my third Saudi Cup now. The club contacted me in early 2019 and I started work with them in April of that year. I very quickly had six or seven months to get the core pieces together for the first event.
"We installed the turf track for the first time. The hospital was here, but it was only a shell. We had the equine hospital, we had to get that up and running. We had to get the infrastructure in the airport, which is only four or five miles away, set to handle that number of horses that quickly.
"Our core focus is to look after the core athlete, i.e. the horse. If you do a good job with the horse then everybody connected with it are happy and then the thing flows positively from there.
"But essentially I served as the event director for the last two and a half years and I do other international racing and strategic portfolios as well."
David Egan won the Saudi Cup in 2021 at the age of just 21 and will try to do so again on Mishriff for John and Thady Gosden again this year.
Ryan admits it was great to see a fellow Irishman win the feature race, especially someone like Egan whose famous racing family he knows so well - from his legendary grandfather Dessie Hughes to Egan's Grand National-winning mother Sandra, who trained Thunder And Roses to success in 2015.
He added: "It was great. Obviously I would have dealt with his mother, Sandra Hughes, quite a lot in Naas when I was there and obviously her father Dessie back in the day. It was brilliant.
"From an Irish perspective, the stallion Make Believe (sire to Mishriff) stands in Co Kilkenny. There was a lot of Irish connection there."
And there's plenty of Irish involvement once again at the meeting this year.
Tony Mullins will aim to follow in his brother Willie's footsteps by winning a race at the prestigious meeting after True Self won the Neom Turf Cup 12 months ago.
Tony runs his stable star Princess Zoe, who landed the Group 1 Prix du Cadran in 2020 before finishing second behind Subjectivist in the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot last summer, in the $2.5million Red Sea Turf Handicap.
The mare will be partnered once again by young jockey Joey Sheridan, who hails from close to where Ryan is from in Tipperary.
"Tony Mullins has a horse, Johnny Murtagh has a horse and Joseph O'Brien is represented again," explained Ryan.
"We bring Shane Foley back out, the winner of the International Jockeys Challenge last year. He comes back as defending champion. We'll see how he goes so we're delighted with the Irish involvement.
"We had a good chat with Tony this morning. We walked a bit of the track and watched the mare canter. They have been very methodical in their preparation now. A young jockey in Joey Sheridan from Tipperary, not too far away from where I am at home originally [will take the ride].
"He has been out in Dubai, he made an effort to come here a couple of weekends ago to ride the track and get to know the surroundings.
"So in terms of preparations, the Irish guys, you can't fault them. Johnny Murtagh has been here before to ride. He knows the place well.
"Joseph has had runners here before so we're hoping that similar to Willie Mullins last year with True Self that one of them can get a winner."
Part of Ryan's role is to oversee the arrival of horses from all over the world to the Middle East for the meeting.
He explained: "We have almost 90 horses from 14 different countries. In terms of international context, the scale of it is starting to get there.
"We've been conscious to give the developing countries a chance as well. We run a race on Friday for countries that are in the second and third tier of the international classification.
"We have runners from Greece, Spain, Norway... all of these kinds of countries that are up and coming.
"We're working on a number of elements with the Ministry of Agriculture and the travel protocols for horses is a key element.
"Saudi Arabia is still navigating a journey through international committees and that sort of thing.
"We still have a number of countries where we would like to negotiate options to take horses like Australia.
"We've horses here from Argentina by indirect means because they were resident in Dubai, but we can't take horses directly from South America just yet.
"So yeah, we're continuing hopefully to expand the footprint that the event has."
And Ryan says the supporting contests are just as important as the $20million feature.
He said: "For me, the beauty and strength of the whole event is not with the feature race. Let's be very honest, you could put a race for $20million on the moon and you'd still have the best horses in the world.
"So myself or the team here don't take any great credit for making a good job out of that.
"It's the other supporting races and the strength of them, and not to say that a half a million dollars or a million dollars is a small amount of money, but internationally speaking a million dollar race isn't something that's unique anymore and for us to get the support for those supporting races from some of the best trainers in the world has been really, really pleasing.
"I'd like to think it's because from the very outset we put the horse at the very centre of our planning and our priority and they can trust us with the horse. That's most of the battle won in terms of encouraging them to come."
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