Football agent Kia Joorabchian splashes out £3.6m for potential wonder horse - as Dubai's ruling Sheikh makes rare public appearance at auction

Kia Joorabchian proved once again that money is no ceiling to ambition as he lit up Tattersalls when spending 3.6million guineas for a potential wonder horse.

The successful football agent has made enormous strides in a short space of time in racing, his horses running under the banner of Amo Racing. 

He has built up a significant string, the bulk of which are based at the historic Freemasons Lodge in Newmarket, and he is determined to add to it.

Joorabchian made a huge splash at Tattersalls 12 months ago, when he invested more than £20million over three days during the prestigious Book 1 sale: this is when the best-bred yearlings are sent through the auction ring and exchange hands for huge fee.

It is so significant that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, makes his only public appearance of the year in Britain. He was once a frequent fixture on racecourses when he had runners, usually in the royal blue of Godolphin, but now is rarely seen.

Lot 15 was the one Joorabchian was determined to buy – 12 months ago, he bought the colt’s big sister for 4.4million guineas – her price coming from the fact her father is super sire Wootton Bassett and her mother was a prolific and consistent winner called Aljazzi.

Joorabchian named that filly Partying – she is yet to set foot on a racecourse but will do in the coming weeks – and he will now have the task of finding a name for the colt after he outbid the world’s leading bloodstock organisation, Coolmore, in a breathless exchange.

There is no doubt Joorabchian will be active in the coming days – he does not expect to spend as much as 12 months ago – but he was determined to make his mark with Lot 15 and hopes the investment, in the long run, will prove to be shrewd.

‘The boys love him,’ Joorabchian said. ‘We have a lot of people that really liked him around us and we couldn't really let him go. We want to keep the family tight. We want to be able to see how the family works out.’

The colt will join his big sister at Freemasons Lodge, where Joorabchian’s private trainer Kevin Phillipart de Foy is based.

‘If he's a very good horse he's going to be a stallion but if he's not, he's not going to be a stallion. Obviously, we like the filly [Partying] otherwise we wouldn't have gone for the brother. But who knows, right?

‘She still hasn't run, but it's a completely different project because if the filly runs or doesn't run, she's still got a huge residual value and she can be a broodmare, and we have five stallions so it's important.

‘I thought we paid a little bit more than what we were expecting to but we're up against Coolmore, and they've got five [partners] versus one. So we've got to give them a crack.’

The reason the colt commanded such a huge price is that Wootton Bassett has been responsible for producing a vast swathe of high-class runners over a variety of distances; he was standing for a fee of £300,000 and was worth more than £50million a year for Coolmore in stud fees alone.

That is why it was a huge blow for them a couple of weeks ago when Wootton Bassett contracted pneumonia in Australia and died; his offspring will be available to buy for another two years but they will soon become collector’s items.