The Qataris are influencing every aspect of racing

Not having the odd £100,000 to spare, I had never before joined the world’s richest owners and their bloodstock agents at Tattersalls yearling sales. It was my loss. Sheikhs in tracksuits and princes in flat caps mingle with ruddy-faced, padded-jacket consignors. In the sales ring, auctioneers rattle through their machinegun patter: ‘What do you want to get her away?…Here’s a wonderful chance to buy into this family who rarely come up for auction, do I have 100,000?…280,000 will seal the deal…he goes right-handed now at 750,000, any more outside?…The hammer’s up, 280,000 will seal the deal.’ They work through 22 lots an hour (at an average price this year for the Book One sale of 207,501), and all figures are in guineas, not pounds. But with buyers from 50 different countries there is high-tech too: the prices reached are simultaneously flashed up in dollars, euros, Japanese yen and Hong Kong dollars. Less high-tech but equally neatly, a Tattersalls employee dashes into the sale ring with a broom between lots, removing equine deposits with a Wimbledon ballboy’s dexterity.

There is John Ferguson, Sheikh Mohammed’s bloodstock adviser, paying 650,000 for a Dubawi colt without blinking an eyelid. There is John Warren, the Queen’s racing adviser, hunched in a green anorak checking through the Highclere syndicates short list with their supremo Harry Herbert.

Led around the parade ring outside, number stickers on their rumps, are the young blue-bloods of the breeding industry awaiting their turn. They are already both beautiful and athletic. Many of them will meet again in a year or so as finely honed professionals contesting major prizes on the racecourse. Later on, bright hopes dimmed, some will finish up running in selling hurdles at Uttoxeter. For the moment, some whinnying nervously, they look like wide-eyed new boys and girls on the first day at boarding school.