Godolphin won a Grade 1 double on Saturday and claimed three prizes in total at the highest level in the two-day Breeders’ Cup meeting at Del Mar in California.
Space Blues clinched his third Group/Grade 1 victory when taking the Breeders’ Cup Mile, while Yibir completed the double for the royal blues in the Breeders’ Cup Turf.
On Friday, Modern Games bagged the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, and all three winners are trained by Charlie Appleby and ridden by William Buick.
Buick pressed the button on Space Blues with just under half a furlong to go and secured a half-length triumph.
“I am absolutely delighted with Space Blues,” Appleby told godolphin.com. “He has been a fantastic horse and will now be retired to stud.
“Space Blues has been a great servant and it’s another well-deserved win. I’m thrilled for team Godolphin both here and back home at Moulton Paddocks in Newmarket and obviously His Highness Sheikh Mohammed (bin Rashid – Vice President and Ruler of Dubai).”
Yibir continued his sensational second half of 2021 when flashing home to get up in the final strides of the Breeders’ Cup Turf.
The Godolphin runner quickened strongly after being switched wide by Buick and passed the majority of the field in the home stretch, collaring Broome near the line.
“Yibir broke from the gates in the Jockey Club Derby and looked like he was actually going to pull himself up at one stage, but we saw that turn of foot there and we saw it again today,” Appleby said.
“William gave him a great ride. It was hard for him as I could see Yibir was really taking him on.
“As William quite rightly said, to still have that finish in him, it just shows what sort of an engine he has got.
“We felt this horse had a lot of talent, he was galloping really well with all our three-year-old middle-distance horses and he has gone and finished it off today.
“He is a horse that I had on my radar to take to Dubai and obviously look at the Dubai Sheema Classic with him. Coming back for a Breeders' Cup next year will definitely be high on his agenda.”
Buick added: “There was a lot of pace in the race but I didn't know how Yibir would react.
“To be honest with you, I thought he was doing too much. But, once we turned into the back, he dropped and he was in a good mile-and-a-half rhythm.
“I was just hoping that he stayed there because he's got an amazingly strong finish. Halfway around the home turn I could see Broome had gone, but I was always confident of picking him up.”
Major honours
ARSENAL
BARCELONA
- La Liga - 2013
- Copa del Rey - 2012
- Fifa Club World Cup - 2011
CHELSEA
- Premier League - 2015, 2017
- FA Cup - 2018
- League Cup - 2015
SPAIN
- World Cup - 2010
- European Championship - 2008, 2012
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
'Young girls thinking of big ideas'
Words come easy for aspiring writer Afra Al Muhairb. The business side of books, on the other hand, is entirely foreign to the 16-year-old Emirati. So, she followed her father’s advice and enroled in the Abu Dhabi Education Council’s summer entrepreneurship course at Abu Dhabi University hoping to pick up a few new skills.
“Most of us have this dream of opening a business,” said Afra, referring to her peers are “young girls thinking of big ideas.”
In the three-week class, pupils are challenged to come up with a business and develop an operational and marketing plan to support their idea. But, the learning goes far beyond sales and branding, said teacher Sonia Elhaj.
“It’s not only about starting up a business, it’s all the meta skills that goes with it -- building self confidence, communication,” said Ms Elhaj. “It’s a way to coach them and to harness ideas and to allow them to be creative. They are really hungry to do this and be heard. They are so happy to be actually doing something, to be engaged in creating something new, not only sitting and listening and getting new information and new knowledge. Now they are applying that knowledge.”
Afra’s team decided to focus their business idea on a restaurant modelled after the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Each level would have a different international cuisine and all the meat would be halal. The pupils thought of this after discussing a common problem they face when travelling abroad.
“Sometimes we find the struggle of finding halal food, so we just eat fish and cheese, so it’s hard for us to spend 20 days with fish and cheese,” said Afra. “So we made this tower so every person who comes – from Africa, from America – they will find the right food to eat.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
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Founders: Michele Ferrario, Nino Ulsamer and Freddy Lim
Started: established in 2016 and launched in July 2017
Based: Singapore, with offices in the UAE, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand
Sector: FinTech, wealth management
Initial investment: $500,000 in seed round 1 in 2016; $2.2m in seed round 2 in 2017; $5m in series A round in 2018; $12m in series B round in 2019; $16m in series C round in 2020 and $25m in series D round in 2021
Current staff: more than 160 employees
Stage: series D
Investors: EightRoads Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Sequoia Capital India
The%20specs
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Coal Black Mornings
Brett Anderson
Little Brown Book Group
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Porsche Taycan Turbo specs
Engine: Two permanent-magnet synchronous AC motors
Transmission: two-speed
Power: 671hp
Torque: 1050Nm
Range: 450km
Price: Dh601,800
On sale: now
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
