Spirit Dancer is set for a well-earned break after finishing lame in his bid for further international honours in Saturday’s Dubai Sheema Classic at Meydan.

Richard Fahey’s charge has enjoyed a hugely productive winter on foreign soil, carrying the red and white silks of part-owner and breeder Sir Alex Ferguson to victory in the Bahrain International Trophy before claiming an even more lucrative success in the Neom Turf Cup in Riyadh.

The seven-year-old was unable to land a blow when stepped up in class on Dubai World Cup night, finishing 11th of 12 runners, but was subsequently found to have sustained an injury.

“He has a chip in his joint I’m afraid, so he did pull up lame,” Fahey said on Tuesday.

“It (injury) won’t have helped. It was a messy sort of race as he sort of dropped in and never got back into it, but that can’t have helped.

“He was due for a holiday anyway and he’ll get it now. He’s fit enough to travel and we’ll sort him out when we get him home.

“It’s been a fantastic winter with him and he’s got the money in the bank to prove it!”

While Fahey is keen to get his charge back to his North Yorkshire base before committing to future targets, there is every chance Spirit Dancer will be stamping his passport again later in the year.

The trainer added: “I’d be keen to go back there (Dubai) again next year, so all roads and plans will lead to go there.

“I’ve got Hong Kong in my mind as well, so we’ll see. He could have a couple of runs over here and then head back over there.”

Rebel’s Romance caused a surprise in the Dubai Sheema Classic, in which dual Derby winner Auguste Rodin finished last.

While Charlie Appleby’s six-year-old did win the Breeders’ Cup Turf in 2022, he was well beaten in the corresponding race 12 months ago and looked to be up against it in a field stacked with quality.

Along with Auguste Rodin, who is developing an all-or-nothing reputation, there was Emily Upjohn, Spirit Dancer and Japanese challengers Liberty Island and Stars On Earth.

The pace was pedestrian, set by Aidan O’Brien’s Point Lonsdale, but only William Buick on the eventual winner and Liberty Island were keen to stay close to it.

With half a mile to run, that trio had opened up a sizeable gap on the remainder of the field and when Buick kicked on to take up the running well over a furlong out, the writing was on the wall.

A strong stayer at the trip, Rebel’s Romance, who won the UAE Derby back in 2021, galloped all the way to the line, with Shahryar, Liberty Island and Justin Palace, all from Japan, taking minor honours. Emily Upjohn fared best of the rest just behind but Auguste Rodin offered nothing.

Appleby said: “He’d won a Breeders’ Cup Turf and four Group Ones, yet he was 20-1, which showed just how deep a race it was.

“William told me he had a plan but I told him not to tell me, then I couldn’t roast him if it went wrong!

“We were confident the right thing to do was go forward and heading down the back, I felt confident because I knew the fractions weren’t strong.

“William knows this track so well and did everything right.

“To have a winner tonight, on what has been a really international night, to get one on the board for Godolphin and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed is very pleasing.”

The Newmarket handler added: “It was our last throw of the darts, but we were confident he was in as good a place as we could get him. He went to Kempton and then had a great ride in Qatar from William.

“He has travelled a lot but we were confident he was at his best. Plan A was to go forward to give the horse the best chance to run his best race.

“This whole night is a huge space in the racing calendar that everyone will aim for. You’ve got to look after these horses and make sure you don’t give them one race too many.

“We toyed with the Champions & Chater Cup in Hong Kong next, but we will enjoy today and he deserves a bit of a rest.”

Buick commented: “He showed in Qatar that he can still perform from the front or close to it. He has a big stride and we decided to get across and somewhere near the action. We were given an easy lead off easy fractions. I was surprised he was in his comfort zone, going easily.”

Sir Alex Ferguson has said it is “an honour” to have bred a horse good enough to run in a race such as the Dubai Sheema Classic with Spirit Dancer, who is chasing an overseas treble.

Trained by Richard Fahey, the seven-year-old has been a real late bloomer and a plan hatched after a victory in a Group Three at York has well and truly come to fruition.

Victories in the Bahrain Trophy and the Neom Turf Cup in Saudi Arabia have propelled the Frankel gelding into the highest company and he is now taking on the likes of dual Derby and Breeders’ Cup winner Auguste Rodin and Japanese filly Liberty Island.

“He’s looking great, I think he’s enjoying it out here actually, who wouldn’t, the climate is fantastic,” Ferguson told the Dubai Racing Club.

“It’s been success all the way, there’s been improvement every race. We’re honoured to be here, the type of race he’s going to be in, it’s outstanding opposition.”

It will be Spirit Dancer’s first run over a mile and a half but it is something Fahey has been keen to try for some time.

Ferguson added: “We’re quietly confident. In fairness, Richard has said all along that he thinks he’s a mile and a half horse. His Frankel pedigree suggests he should be able to cope with it, so we’re hopeful in that respect, but we don’t know.

“It’s an honour to have a horse in a race of this magnitude that you’ve bred yourself.

“When he won at York, Richard told us we were going to Bahrain and I said ‘Bahrain! What do we want to go there for?’ – and he said there was a great race there for him, so he’s the architect and we’re not going to argue with what he’s doing.

“We’ve enjoyed it, we’ve had a few days in Bahrain, a few days in Saudi and now a week here. It’s fantastic.”

It has been one success after another for Ferguson, who as well as enjoying victories abroad with Spirit Dancer, celebrated a Cheltenham Festival double earlier this month.

Having broken his Cheltenham Festival duck with a dream double when Monmiral and Protektorat scored, Sir Alex Ferguson is chasing more glory with Spirit Dancer in the Dubai Sheema Classic on Saturday.

Bred by Ferguson himself, the Richard Fahey-trained seven-year-old has enjoyed a memorable 12 months.

He started last season in handicaps off a mark of 97, his winning spree began at York in July, was followed by a Racing League success at Windsor and he returned to the Knavesmire to claim the Group Three Strensall Stakes.

Spirit Dancer appears to love racing abroad even more, though, as in November he bagged the Bahrain Trophy and last month he won the Neom Turf Cup in Saudi Arabia, taking his career earnings to over £1.7million.

“Everything’s going great. Looking at the videos and speaking to the lad out there, I believe he’s come on in his coat and his demeanour, he’s in very good form,” said Fahey.

“He did have five weeks to acclimatise from his first run this season to the Neom Turf Cup and it’s nearly another five weeks again.

“We’re very lucky to be able to have him there because it’s more or less the same climate in the Middle East and he’s had time to settle into a good routine – he’s loving his time there. It’s an easier preparation to do it there than from here.

“It was always in the back of my mind to go to a mile and a half. You’d have every confidence that he should stay. He relaxes and in all his races he’s always finished well.

“We are in at Group One level, so it will be a huge ask, but we’ve had a nice prep and it’s always nice coming there off the back of a win. I’m really looking forward to seeing him run.”

Equinox has been crowned the world’s best racehorse of 2023 – and with it the highest-rated Japanese horse of all time.

A year that started with a brilliant three-and-a-half-length beating of Westover in the Dubai Sheema Classic featured another three Group Ones, culminating in his farewell to the track in the Japan Cup.

Trained by Tetsuya Kimura, Equinox was only beaten twice in his 10-race career, winning six Group Ones in total.

He was given a rating of 135 in the Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings, which are compiled by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities.

His figure is 5lb below the 140 awarded to Flightline 12 months ago, which equalled the benchmark under the current system set by Frankel in 2012, but he sits 7lb ahead of last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Ace Impact and dual Group One victor Mostahdaf, who were both rated 128.

Christophe Lemaire rode Equinox in every start and he attended a glittering ceremony in London on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the son of Kitasan Black’s achievement.

Asked what it was like to ride Equinox, Lemaire joked: “To be honest it was quite enjoyable!

“Each time he ran there were big expectations, but I had so much confidence in the horse that I had no fear. To ride him, it was just a pleasure to be on a galloping horse.

“The way he ran was just amazing. Of course, I tried to do my job as well as possible and it was a great journey – I will miss him a lot.

“As have most top athletes, he had a combination of physical strength and mental strength. His physical allowed him to run fast and further using his beautiful stride, very well balanced and also he was very clever, so he understood very quickly what he had to do to win the race.

“My job was just to take a good start and put him in the right position to let him express his talent.

“He was nearly the perfect racehorse and we have to congratulate the breeder (Northern Farm) who could produce such a beautiful horse and the trainer for getting him mature to compete at the best level.

“Just after his debut, I could feel he was special, the way he moved, his acceleration, his attitude on the track – I could feel very quickly he would become a very good horse. Most other people discovered him in Dubai, but in Japan he was already a rising star.”

Equinox officially retired at the end of November, with thousands of people attending a ceremony for the horse in mid-December before he headed to his new role at Shadai Stallion Station, where he will stand for ¥20 million – just over £106,000.

Speaking through a translator, Kimura said: “I wasn’t prepared for it all (the praise he received after Dubai), I feel like I’ve still been in a dream since then.

“The expectations were very high (before the Japan Cup) and it was very difficult to stay calm, but Equinox showed an amazing start and he has the most beautiful stride in the world and he managed to beat all his rivals with his amazing stamina, so I have nothing else that I wanted from him at all.”

To add to the Japanese laurels, the Japan Cup was named the best race in the world for the first time, with a rating assigned on the first four finishers.

Aidan O’Brien has indicated last year’s star three-year-old Auguste Rodin could begin his 2024 campaign in the Dubai Sheema Classic.

Winner of the Derby, Irish Derby, Irish Champion Stakes and the Breeders’ Cup Turf, he was expertly handled by O’Brien to bounce back from bitter disappointments in the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket and the King George at Ascot.

To win four times at the highest level in three different countries confirmed O’Brien’s long-held view that Auguste Rodin, who is by Japanese superstar Deep Impact, is a little out of the ordinary.

As such it was a bold decision by connections to keep him in training, and O’Brien is clearly not going to wrap him up in cotton wool, with the first part of his season potentially already mapped out and a crack at the world’s best dirt races possible later in the year.

Speaking on a media call regarding the 2023 European Classifications, which saw his City Of Troy lead the way, O’Brien said: “I suppose with Auguste Rodin this year we are going to start off probably in Dubai (March 30), then he might come back to the Curragh for the Tattersalls (Gold Cup), then he could go to Ascot for the Prince of Wales’s.

“Then after that it is possible we could have a look at dirt and see what happens because when we cantered him on the dirt at the Breeders’ Cup he was loving it.”