Qatar Racing Ltd & Sangster Family

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Robert Sangster, who died in April 2004, at the age of 67, literally transformed Thoroughbred racing. His impact continues today through his son, Adam, the owner of 900-acre Swettenham Stud in Victoria, Australia. Sangster was the British Flat Champion Owner five times, and his horses won 27 European Classics and more than 100 Group 1 stakes. Sangster, the son of Vernons Pools founder Vernon Sangster, was born in Liverpool. After attending Repton School, he served in the Cheshire Regiment and won a brigade heavyweight-boxing championship in Berlin. Then he joined the family business, becoming managing director and chairman. Aware of the plans to create the National Lottery, he sold the business to Ladbrokes for a reported 90 million pounds. His first horse, Chalk Stream, won two stakes. In October 1971, Sangster was introduced to John Magnier, an Irish stud farmer. Joining legendary trainer Vincent O’Brien, they formed a team that became known as “The brethern.” In the early 1970s, Sangster and Magnier began shuttling stallions between the northern and southern hemispheres. Sangster sold his interest in Coolmore in 1993 while retaining breeding rights to a number of stallions, including Saddler’s Wells and Danehill. Sangster was married and divorced three times and had five sons and a daughter. Racing correspondent Julian Wilson said of Sangster: “His pleasures were boxing, champagne, golf, racing and beautiful women, in no particular order, and often more than one at the same time.”

Willie Carson, Emily Asprey & Chris Wright

A shared lunch at the Tattersalls yearling sales in Newmarket, England, united legendary jockey/BBC commentator Willie Carson and Chris Wright, the co-founder and chairman of Chrysalis Records, as Thoroughbred partners. “It was a couple of years ago,” Wright said after Chriselliam won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf. “I was having a pretty nice lunch, and I think I drank a little too much wine, and I ended up buying a filly. And I persuaded Willie, who had been drinking a little bit with me, that he should take half.” He did. That filly won a race and was sold, but Chriselliam is a keeper.

Carson, born on November 16, 1942 in Stirling, Scotland, became just the fourth jockey to win 3,000 races in Great Britain, retiring with 3,828 victories as the fourth leading jockey in British history behind Sir Gordon Richards, Lestor Piggott, and Pat Eddery. Carson was awarded the British Order of the Empire for his service to racing in 1983, and he was a member of the inaugural class of 50 inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. Besides working for the BBC, he has served as chairman of the Swindon Town Football Club and was the European racing manager for The Thoroughbred Corp.

Carson had a tough loss in the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, when the horse on the lead he was riding, Dayjur, jumped two shadows a few strides before the wire, allowing Safely Kept to beat him. “To own a Breeders’ Cup winner is much better than riding one, I can assure you,” he said after Chriselliam’s victory. “When you’re riding them, you’re in charge and there’s no pressure on you. But as an owner standing up in those box seats, it’s nuts. I understand now what owners go through.”

Wright can compare owning Thoroughbreds to owning records. He and Terry Ellis founded Chrysalis Records, a British record label, in 1969. They changed the company’s original name from the Ellis-Wright Agency to Chrysalis, a reference to the pupil stage of a butterfly as well as a combination of Wright’s first name and Ellis’s last. Chrysalis evolved into EMI, then was sold for a reported $765 million. Of hanging out with rock stars, Wright said in a 2010 interview, “I hung out with them all. I did everything. Drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll.”

With Chriselliam, Carson and Wright took on 17-year-old Emily Asprey as a partner, allowing her to become the youngest owner of a Breeders’ Cup winner. She is an eighth generation descendant of William Asprey, founder of Asprey International Limited, a United Kingdom-based designer, manufacturer, and retailer of jewelry, silverware, home goods, leather goods, timepieces, books, accessories, and polo equipment. The company was founded in 1781 as Asprey & Co.