'Sheikh Mohammed said I could choose a horse as a gift and that's how it started' - top owner's incredible journey from Italia 90 to Epsom

Not long after we sit down at the sales to discuss his attitude to buying and selling horses, Ahmad Al Shaikh is approached by a Tattersalls manager who wishes him good luck with a homebred horse he is putting through the ring later that day.

“This guy, he calls me now and again to say, ‘Ahmad, you are so lucky with the horses you buy here', but I tell him it is not luck, you have to study,” Al Shaikh says. “It's like when you are at school and you study, two days before the exam you cannot sleep – I am like this when I come to the sale.”

Lucky or studious, Al Shaikh has developed a reputation for being able to source horses for relatively modest sums who are then able to achieve on the racecourse before being sold on for amounts far in excess of what they were purchased for.