Ahmed Ajtebi was racing camels until he sat down to lunch with the Ruler of Dubai. Now he is a familiar face in paddocks across the horse-racing world, with his sights set on an Epsom Derby win. Jonny Beardsall meets the UAE’s only home-grown jockey.

Ajtebi rides Dubawi Phantom in the Jaguar All-New XJ Autumn Stakes at Ascot last October. Scott Harvey / Action Images

From the sanctuary of the jockeys’ room at Newmarket racecourse, a diminutive rider from Dubai flashes his beaming smile on a warm July evening in eastern England. “I’m Ahmed Ajtebi. I’ll shower and be with you in a minute,” he says in good, cheerful English, before skedaddling back into the thatched-roofed building to change from royal blue silks to a smart grey suit.

Not that this most likeable 29-year-old, a one-time camel jockey, could be mistaken for anyone else. With deep olive skin, sunken chestnut eyes and short dark hair, he is more supremely skinny than short. His narrow face and chiselled cheekbones imply that he counts the calories, although, at a shade more than 51 kilos, he is sylphlike and so has no need to suffer the extreme deprivation that many jockeys put themselves through.

Another win three days earlier, riding for one of the two super-power Godolphin stables of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the Ruler of Dubai, had taken Ajtebi’s career tally to 96, a magic number that sees him turn from apprentice to senior jockey.

Given that the sheikh’s other yard retains the celebrated Frankie Dettori – who has ridden more than 3,000 winners – you can imagine Ajtebi has to pinch himself everyday to check he isn’t dreaming.

Simon Crisford, Godolphin’s racing manager, says he doesn’t need to. “Ahmed has done really well. It’s great having him working for our stable and he’s a very popular member of the team. He is an extremely nice man.”

Two years ago Ajtebi’s perfect white teeth first grinned from the sports pages when he became the only Emirati jockey to ride a winner at Royal Ascot. A year later he pulled off the double of his life for Godolphin at the World Cup in Nad al Sheba when he took the Dubai Duty Free race with an inspired piece of front-running on the locally trained Gladiatorus. The same day he snatched victory on the line on Eastern Anthem in a thrilling three-way finish in the Dubai Sheema Classic.

“It was amazing. I was an apprentice and in the space of half an hour I’d ridden two Group 1 winners and won £4 million (Dh22 million) in prize money. Best of all, my dad was there to see me,” he says.

It got better. In November, he won at the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in Santa Anita, California, entering the winner’s enclosure on Vale of York with the UAE flag draped across his back.

This afternoon in Newmarket is bread-and-butter stuff. He has come fifth in a lowly race for two-year-old fillies worth £4,000 (Dh22,000) to the winner. In the unsaddling enclosure he exchanges a few thoughts with trainer Mahmood al Zarooni, also from Dubai, and then sets off across the manicured lawns to weigh-in, his tiny saddle over his forearm, his working day almost done.

As the UAE’s only home-grown jockey, Ajtebi is still pretty unfathomable to British racing. Some will say that purely royal connections – he is the nephew of one of Sheikh Mohammed’s long-standing friends, Saeed Manana – provide his golden opportunities. It is likely that some are envious but none can say that he isn’t making the most of his advantages. He comes with implacable self-belief and, so far, it hasn’t deserted him in or out of the saddle.

“People look at me and say this is the guy from Dubai. I feel that when I ride I do so for my country,” he says, glancing at his showy Chopard wristwatch with the lapis lazuli face, which is thicker than his wrist. “I can’t stop now. I love it and always try my best for those supporting me.”

But unlike most of his weighing room colleagues who could ride before they could walk, Ajtebi didn’t sit on a horse until he was 22. Not that he lacked racecourse experience: as a precocious six-year-old, he was race-riding camels at home, only putting away his whip at 14 when his weight rose above 25kg. By then, he had amassed more than 200 winners from 3,000 rides, mostly for his father, who died last year.

“Dad owned and trained 50 animals a 25-minute drive from the centre of Dubai city,” says Ajtebi.

Seven years ago, when still very much involved with training his father’s camels, he fell into conversation over lunch with Sheikh Mohammed. “He said the UAE had horses in training everywhere in the world, but Dubai had no jockey and would I like the chance to become one. I told him that I had never ridden a horse in my life, but he pushed me.”

In 2003, he and two other Dubai-born apprentices were sent to Ireland to gain experience. Ajtebi was seconded to trainer John Oxx’s stable for four months. “I couldn’t speak any English – I picked it up because I had to,” he says. Back in Dubai, he had his first ride at Nad Al Sheba and became apprenticed to the Dubai trainer Ali al Raihe. His first win came a year later on Al Tharb at Geelong, Australia, where he incurred a Dh600 fine for his over-exuberant celebrations.

After two summers in South Africa he arrived in England in 2007. Clive Brittain, the much-revered Newmarket trainer, became his mentor. “Ahmed came to me as an ordinary apprentice. I find him very genuine. I was very impressed with his work and his dedication. I gave him 17 rides and he rode six winners and he rides one for me tomorrow,” he says.

Since then Ajtebi has remained on a merry-go-round, which takes him from the UAE, where he rides in winter, to Britain, where he rides all summer, with short missions to Europe, the US, Australia and South Africa.

“Britain is the place to improve in racing because it has so many different racecourses,” he says. “Last year I rode a double at the new course, Ffos Las, in Wales, on the day it opened, which made me feel really good.”

Ajtebi has come a long way from racing camels, a ride with scant similarities to a racehorse. “They both have four legs and run very fast,” he says, laughing out loud, which he does often. “The saddles are different, you have no irons, you have one rein and a long camel stick, which you use to try and keep it straight.” Still smiling he hops into his smart Mercedes, for the short drive to his home.

Ajtebi lives alone in Duchess Park, a 26-acre new development in a splurge of tree-lined green space to the south side of Newmarket’s High Street. For a while he has felt like a desert nomad. Although someone has now moved in next door, most of the recently built houses remain unoccupied.

His is a smart yet unremarkable five-bedroom home with a garden in which only a satellite dish has been planted; it badly needs someone to make an oasis, to create the smells an Arab must miss, to grow fruit and roses on the empty lawn.

“Welcome, do come in,” he says, unlocking the white door and stepping inside. He is polite, helpful and courteous; he pours coffee for me and tea without milk for himself with one spoon of sugar. He opens a box of dark chocolates from Harrods and switches off the World Cup that was playing to itself on the large screen television in the sitting room.

He has a young family in Dubai. “My wife, Tahani, stays in Dubai where the children are at school. I have three girls – Mezna, eight, Dhabya, three, and Bakhita, two – and one boy, Mohammed, who is seven, with another child on the way,” he says. “I hope they’ll be coming over soon. I ring home all the time. I sometimes call my mum twice a day, before and after a race.”

His rooms are starkly unrevealing; furnished in the bland style of a show home, the neutral-hued walls and carpets, leather sofas, chairs and coffee table and the shiny kitchen and the beds came with the house. But for framed photographs of Sheikh Mohammed and another of one of the ruler’s sons riding in endurance races and a small snapshot above the fireplace of himself – with a beard – riding in the US, all other meaningless pictures were here when he moved in.

“I don’t have time for furniture shopping,” he says, which is true. Like most professional Flat jockeys he doesn’t have a moment in summer for anything other than racing. “In Britain you are always travelling. Tomorrow I will ride in Newmarket before riding at Doncaster and Newcastle, so I won’t be back till late. The next day, I’ll get up at 5am, drive to Stansted airport, then fly to ride in the Irish Derby. Again I won’t be home before midnight.”

So how does he find his way about? “Sometimes I have a driver, but often I drive myself. It’s easy with satellite navigation… I find the postcode for the course, then away I go. I don’t need a map.”

The Racing Post – the British horse racing daily newspaper – is the extent of his reading material. He doesn’t possess many books, and racing is all he watches on TV, usually his own rides, which he pre-records for post mortems. The weekend we meet, Glastonbury Festival, Wimbledon Tennis Championships and the World Cup are all being staged but he has no interest in any of them, he says.

On a low coffee table lies a recently opened packet of dates. “They give me energy. I’m the only one in the weighing room eating dates. No one else really likes them, so I can safely leave them lying around.” On a worktop, the drifting fragrance from a ceramic jar of aromatic oil fills the rooms, reminding him of the souks and marbled halls back home.

He has a cleaner, so the place is immaculate. There isn’t much in his giant stainless-steel fridge: lettuce, tomatoes, a few eggs, nothing too enticing. “I can cook but, actually, I’m not a big eater. I go to the supermarket in town and live a European life. I’m used to it. My weight is good. But I don’t go drinking or clubbing, I’m not that sort of person.”

Unselfconsciously, he underlines his special relationship with the Ruler of Dubai. He is seeing him later that evening at the Shiekh’s mansion on the edge of town. “Like my car, this house was a gift from him [Sheikh Mohammed]. He feels like he’s my dad. When my father passed away last year, he became closer to me. He treats me as if I am his son.

“He has pushed me so hard… with his money, his horses and his experience.”

So how on earth does Ajtebi cope with the weight of so much expectation? He pauses. “He never puts me under pressure. He has taught me to say what I think. If I disagree about the distance a horse needs or how to ride it, he wants me to say so, and we speak on the phone before and after every race.”

Ajtebi is determined to win the Epsom Derby one day. He had his first ride in the race this year on Buzzword after flying in from Newmarket with his boss in his helicopter. He came eighth. “For me it is the greatest race in the world and I loved riding in front of the Queen of England. One day I hope I’ll succeed,” he says.

As one of only a handful of jockeys riding for stables that always run horses in the Derby, it is not implausible that one day this extraordinarily lucky man just might just pull it off.

Calming Influence takes on some of the world’s top milers today when he makes his first start in Europe since November in the Group One Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Ahmad Ajtebi rides Calming Influence to victory in the Godolphin Mile at Meydan. Pawan Singh / The National

The five-year-old son of King’s Best gave Mahmood al Zarooni his first win when quickening well to land the Group Two Godolphin Mile on Tapeta at Meydan Racecourse but the Godolphin trainer knows he and his jockey Ahmed Atjebi face a tough task to repeat that victory today.

“Calming Influence is well and fit but it looks like it is a very tough renewal of the Queen Anne Stakes this year,” said al Zarooni.“He won nicely out in Dubai and he is in good form at the moment, but he hasn’t run since March and there might be a question mark over him running well over a straight mile – he loved the bends around Meydan.”

Calming Influence lines up against nine others in the Ascot dual, including Breeders’ Cup Mile heroine Goldikova, last year’s winner Paco Boy and Rip Van Winkle, who scored over a mile at Ascot in the Group One Queen Elizabeth II Stakes last year. However, Aidan O’Brien has voiced genuine concerns about Rip Van Winkle.

“Rip Van Winkle is in good form and we think that he has done really well from three to four and definitely gone the right way,” the trainer told The Racing Post. “But because he hasn’t had a run this year, we are genuinely worried about his fitness, as most of our horses usually come on a good bit from their first run.”
Godolphin has won the Queen Anne Stakes seven times, through Charnwood Forest (1996), Allied Forces (1997), Intikhab (1998), Cape Cross (1999), Dubai Destination (2003), Refuse To Bend (2004) and Ramonti (2007).

The number of property and construction disputes heard at the Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC) more than doubled last year as the financial crisis took hold.

Most of the arbitration cases involved late or non-delivery of developments and contractors chasing compensation for cancelled projects or late payments from developers. Steve Crisp / Reuters

The centre handled 206 cases last year arising from the property and construction sectors, compared with 100 in 2008.

Of last year’s disputes, 126 were property-related and principally between large commercial investors and developers of overdue projects. The remaining 80 cases were from the construction sector.

DIAC’s workload is expected to increase further this year as the fallout from the financial crisis continues to be felt, said Fathi Kemicha, an executive committee member at DIAC, which is part of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “The latest indications are that it will not slow,” he said. “On the contrary, when you have a crisis, there are more disputes.”

Meanwhile, DIAC also handled 81 cases last year that revolved around “breaches in commercial contracts” across all sectors, while just five cases related to the insurance and shipping sectors.

Arbitration is a legal process in which disputes are resolved by a third party without recourse to litigation, which can be expensive and time-consuming.

“You don’t need to go to court if you have an enforcement of a decision from DIAC,” Mr Kemicha said. “The final award is final and that’s it.”

Most of the property disputes involved late or non-delivery of projects, while contractors were chasing compensation for cancelled projects or late payments from developers. Other cases involved subcontractors seeking payments from main contractors.

A slowdown in the emirate’s formerly thriving construction sector since the onset of the economic downturn has led to the rise in disputes.

About 240 projects have been cancelled or are indefinitely on hold in Dubai, according to Proleads, an industry auditing company based in the emirate.

A construction lawyer in Dubai, who asked not to be named, said most of the disputes were caused by a “lack of attention” to contract details when they were signed, mainly because developers and contractors were “caught up in the boom”.

One of the biggest cases to emerge last year was between Arabtec Holding, the UAE’s largest construction company, and Meydan Group, the developer behind the Meydan Racecourse in Dubai.

Arabtec and its joint-venture partner, Malaysia’s WCT Engineering, are seeking Dh1.6bn (US$435.5 million) in compensation after a Dh4.77bn deal to build the recently opened racecourse was cancelled half-way through construction in January last year. Arbitration continues in the case.

Over the past year, DIAC has had to hire more legal experts to handle the backlog of cases and is seeking more experts, added Mr Kemicha. “We handle some huge cases and you need to have experienced arbitrators.”

Law firms have also seen a rise in demand for their services over the past year, although the number of construction-related cases has fallen slightly in recent months, said Philip Punwar, a partner at Fulbright and Jaworski in Dubai. “Things have settled down a bit,” he said.

“I think people have overcome the shock at the onset of the financial crisis and many have worked out some way forward for themselves. Companies are also reluctant to commit their resources to arbitration and hope they can reach an amicable solution.”

Meanwhile, he said, disputes between investors in property and developers of projects that are late currently make up the largest number of cases.

“It’s mainly for commercial property, say an investor who bought 15 units in a building that is way beyond schedule. But every now and then you will come across a case that might be about a single villa, for example.”

agiuffrida@thenational.ae

DUBAI // Like many young men entering adulthood, Saeed al Mazrooie was unsure of a career path.

Ahmed Ajtebi, at Meydan Racecourse, was the first Emirati jockey to emerge as an international star. Pawan Singh / The National

Then the 22-year-old Emirati worked it out for himself. He would become a jockey.

“I have always liked horses and have been following racing. I had a physique of a jockey and that’s what really inspired me to try my hands on this job,” said al Mazrooie, who weighs 47kg and stands 1.62 metres tall.

He knew that Ahmed Ajtebi, also an Emirati, had become an international racing star while riding for the powerful Godolphin stable.

Al Mazrooie took the step of dedicating himself to the sport.

After five months of training in the stables, the Emirates Racing Authority (ERA) has chosen him to travel to Ireland for four months to study at the Racing Academy Centre for Education, the institution from which Ajtebi emerged.

Yasir Mabrouk, the ERA official who oversees apprentice programs, believes al Mazrooie could be a star in the making.

“This is the path Ahmed [Ajtebi] took and I believe Saeed can be as successful as him if he stays focused on his own abilities and doesn’t start thinking out of the box,” Mabrouk said.

“So far, he has done well. He is ambitious, determined and is enjoying his work.”

Al Mazrooie, however, would prefer not to be known for travelling on a trail blazed by Ajtebi.

“When I am successful with my apprenticeship, I don’t want to be remembered as someone who followed in the footsteps of Ahmed,” he said during an interview at the Meydan Hotel. “I want to do my own thing and be successful with my own brand.”

He added: “Ahmed is the first Emirati jockey to have had a lot of success internationally, but it wasn’t his success that made me decide to take this path.”

Al Mazrooie’s real education in racing began in the Grand Stand stable with the menial jobs that mark the early days of most great riders, cleaning stalls and grooming horses.

His day starts as early as 5am. By 11am he has finished his first shift. The second begins at 4pm and continues until 7pm.

In five months under Ali Rashid al Raihe, the champion trainer at the Grand Stand Stables, al Mazrooie has displayed perseverance in working towards his goal.

He knows that is was al Raihe who also helped Ajtebi in his formative years before retaining him as his stable’s second jockey.

Al Raihe has been impressed with al Mazrooie. “He has gone through all the basic work from cleaning the muck from the stables to grooming the horses, which is the toughest part for a young Emirati these days.

“Otherwise, he possesses the right height and weight for a jockey and, more importantly, a strong mind.”

Al Mazrooie treats the Emirati trainer as a father figure who has taught him many important methods for taking care of horses.

Royston Ffrench, the stable jockey, has also been a mentor to al Mazrooie, taking it upon himself to impart riding tips which should help the youngster pursue a career.

Mabrouk said Ajtebi has laid out the path for Emiratis to follow if they wish to become jockeys. Three others have attempted it, but they failed to progress beyond their apprenticeship.

“The jockeys have to be conscious of their weight and they need to be up early to work on the horses,” Mabrouk said. “Besides, Ahmed had no one to look up to. Everything he did was for the first time and his success can’t be measured in terms of the regular schooling.

“He came from a humble background and remains the humble guy whom I knew for more than seven years.”

Ajtebi, 29, never fails to mention Mabrouk’s role during his formative years as a jockey.

Ajtebi rode into history by becoming the first Emirati to ride a winner at Royal Ascot when he steered Regal Parade to victory for the trainer Dandy Nicholls in 2008.

Last year, he rode a Group One double at the Dubai World Cup meeting on Gladiatorus and Eastern Anthem, and later claimed the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile Stakes at Santa Anita, California, on Vale of York.

Al Mazrooie may travel in the same circles some day. But first he must get his apprentice licence.

When he comes home to Dubai from Ireland, he will return to Grand Stand Stables, and al Raihe could nominate him as an apprentice, subject to ERA approval.

Al Mazrooie expects to be riding at tracks in the UAE before the year is out, on his way to becoming the second professional Emirati jockey in the nation.

Said al Mazrooie: “I am confident I can be riding this season.”

apassela@thenational.ae

BEIJING // Lee Jian Wen smiles as he holds up a photograph showing him with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid.

Lee Jian Wen, the chairman of Globe Enterprise Management, the Beijing-based company developing Meydan Phoenix City in association with the Dubai-based Meydan Group. Daniel Bardsley / The National

It is hardly surprising that Mr Lee is enthusiastic about Dubai and its Ruler. His Beijing-based firm, Globe Enterprise Management, has partnered with Meydan Group, the Dubai-based developer of the Meydan Racecourse that hosted its first Dubai World Cup in late March, to create plans for Meydan Phoenix City in China.

The US$4 billion (Dh14.6bn) development in Ninghe county is expected to include an equestrian college, stud farm, horse auction centre, feedstuff plant, offices, apartments, villas, a five-to-seven-star hotel and, should the state give the go-ahead, a horse racing course.

“The horse racing culture, the whole management of the industry in Dubai is very similar to [the proposals for] China,” he said. “Around the world, horse racing involves gambling and betting, but in Dubai it’s a carnival.”

Mr Lee, the chairman of Globe Enterprise Management, said the Meydan Phoenix City project represented the culmination of a personal quest dating back nearly a decade to when Beijing won the bid for the 2008 Olympics.

Although the Olympics were hailed as a success, the equestrian events had to take place in Hong Kong because horse racing was outlawed on the mainland when the Communists took over in 1949. When the Olympic plans were taking shape, Mr Lee decided it was time that changed.

“I did research in the domestic market and I visited places like Dubai and the United States to see what horse racing is like,” he said. “I thought why shouldn’t we have a national-scale horse racing course.”

Mr Lee emphasised that Meydan Phoenix City was about more than racing, which remains heavily restricted on the mainland.

“We will build the infrastructure and see if the Chinese government opens the market,” he said. “We can develop it with the horse racing centre or without the horse racing centre.”

Other sources of income will include levies on horse auctions and tuition fees from the equestrian college. The market, he said, is “huge”.

“With the training college, we have always used coaches trained in other countries to be directors here in the domestic market. That costs money and it’s very humiliating. We send our competitors in horse racing around the world, but we don’t have our own college. That’s ridiculous.

“We will build the infrastructure and lay the foundation for this industry in the future.”

The plan is to employ 10,000 people and have 1,000 horses in the breeding programme.

Mr Lee said the location at a site in Ninghe county, 30km from the centre of Tianjin, a city 30 minutes by high-speed train ride from Beijing, was a major plus.

“According to the experts it’s suited to the breeding of horses because there’s abundant juicy grass,” Mr Lee said. “In Tianjin in the summer it’s very mild, and in the winter it only snows once or twice.”

Overall, Mr Lee said the project, the building of which could start later this year and take five years, would succeed because of its scope and scale.

“No single horse racing course has a future in China,” he said. “We don’t have the expertise or the talent for that and it won’t get support from the government.

“This is a whole industry chain [being created] and that’s why we seriously think it will be a success.”

Gaofeng Yue, the executive secretary general of the China Horse Industry Association, said Tianjin Horse City would play “a leadership role” in expanding the country’s horse industry.

“It’s very complete and self-sufficient. It has feedstuffs and everything else needed for the industry,” he said.

“It integrates resources from Malaysia and the UAE. Our association is paying great attention to this project.

“All the sports related to horses originated in China although they’re more popular in western countries. They came from China and we’re trying to regain that position.”

dbardsley@thenational.ae

The welcome

To be welcomed somewhere, you have to get there first.

The Meydan Hotel in Dubai Courtesy: Meydan Hotel

This was the first hurdle that presented itself with the new Meydan Hotel. How difficult can it possibly be, you might reasonably wonder, to find a hotel that’s part of a new and mammoth multi-billion dollar racecourse complex?

Pretty challenging indeed, it turns out. Several of the new roads around Meydan are abruptly cut off with cones and the signage is feeble.

“There’s one,” shrieked my friend Cam, pointing at a sign as we reversed, pulled off an off-road area of sand we had traversed in desperation and got back on to the same road for the 43rd time.

Finally, tucked just around the corner from this sign was the impressive, glassy hotel front tacked on to the main Meydan building. We were 20 minutes late, but this mattered not a jot to the staff who took our bags, told us we could check in later and ushered us towards brunch.

The neighbourhood

We’re told to call this whole area Meydan City, as in Media City, DIFC and all the rest.

It lies, easily enough, just 15 minutes or so off the Sheikh Zayed Road from exit 47. But having opened in March, there is clearly still much to do in the surrounding area before it feels complete. It should be great come the beginning of racing action (the season runs from November to March), but in the off months between, things will feel subdued.

The scene

Horsey. Carpets have little horseshoe patterns stamped in them and there are horse motifs outside every room. But then, what would you expect at the world’s most advanced racecourse?

No particularly equine feel to the crowd taking advantage of the new brunch in Farriers, though, as families in particular, along with couples and a few groups, mingled happily together. Few seemed to be staying, and later that evening things felt eerily abandoned. Imagine staying in a deserted boarding school during the summer holidays. There’s a fabulous rooftop infinity pool though, from which you call wallow in the water with a bird’s eye view of the course.

The room

The Meydan has a total of 285 rooms and suites. On the sixth floor, like most other Meydan rooms, ours featured a balcony big enough to seat two from which you have a direct view of the finishing posts.

Cam squealed on wandering into the bathroom (“the biggest bath, with a television screen”), I squealed having collapsed on the vast bed. The most comfortable hotel beds ever? Quite possibly.

The service

Exhausting. We were on a girls’ weekend; we wanted to go to the spa. Could reception send up a spa menu? Of course they could, but we had to ring back three times before being put through to the men’s salon, who told us the salon worked only on an appointment basis and then, after much hassling, that the spa wasn’t operating yet.

Could they not just have told us that at the beginning? And while lying on our bed watching a movie (after the television was fixed), there were four or five separate knocks on the door offering tea, help with the air conditioning and general room service. The hotel needs more guests to mop up this kindly but over-eager attentiveness.

The food

Brunch in Farriers (Dh495 inclusive of sparkling drinks) offers food from key racing nations around the world, so there is an Arabic station along with others from countries including Britain, Australia, Japan, France and Germany.

“No horse on the menu I hope?” I joked to our waitress. She looked back at me blankly. Apparently not, but the general spread of sushi, cheese, salad, meat, breads and obligatory puddings in dinky little glasses was cracking.

Better still was dinner that night in Prime, the hotel’s slightly gothic steakhouse. Having swallowed brunch mere hours earlier, Cam and I could only manage a modest amount of red meat. Tartare for me (made next to the table), fillet for her. Still full at breakfast the next morning, we could only manage eggs, mushrooms and tomatoes chased down with large urns of coffee.

Loved

Gorging ourselves on the food. (Did I mention that the contents of the refrigerator in every room are complimentary?) And the practical checking-out policy, which is 24 hours after you check in.

Hated

The over-attentiveness, the fact that the spa wasn’t open and the feeling that you were staying in a ghost town. But all of these should have been cleared up come racing season, which is when you really want to be there.

The verdict

A vague disappointment after everything touted about Meydan, but it’s early days yet. And if you don’t live in Dubai, or possibly even if you do, then it might be worth booking a room for next year’s World Cup now.

The bottom line

Double rooms currently cost from US$245 (Dh900) for GCC residents, $327 (Dh1,200) for everyone else. This includes breakfast and taxes.

The Meydan Hotel, Meydan City, Dubai (www.themeydan.com; 04 381 3333).