President Trump, the world`s highest profile politician, must wish he had Frankie Dettori`s popularity: the world`s highest-profile jockey must wish he had Trump`s money. With his tariffs Trump may bankrupt the world; with the racing world at his feet Dettori has bankrupted himself: he has issues with the British tax authorities. Odd really, punters have always felt their money was safe with Frankie – his ‘Magnificent Seven` winning rides that day in 1996 when he went through the card at Ascot convinced punters their money was safe with Frankie.

The world is spinning on its axis but racing, as winter turned irrevocably to spring in the western hemisphere at the beginning of April, captured headlines and as so often in the past, owed much to Dettori. He almost added a fifth Dubai World Cup at Meydan on American-trained Mixto but that one`s compatriot, the 66-1 outsider Hit Show, caught him close home for the first prize of £5.5m: Dettori`s mount received £1.9m ‘compensation` for second place.

Shock of the race was defeat for the world`s highest-rated horse and long odds on four-year-old Forever Young. The Japanese are obsessed with the world`s top races annually tilting, vainly, at the Prix de L`Arc de Triomphe in Paris. They have achieved their big race objective in Dubai twice, in 2011 and 2023 and, were confident about a third with Forever Young, their £8m Saudi Cup winner in Riyadh in January. Forever Young has career earnings of £12 1/2m, so far.

We are talking here of prize money on a different planet to that of day to day racing anywhere outside the Arab world.

Hit Show is a combination of Argentinian, American and Canadian blood, ridden by a Frenchman, Florent Geroux. Dubai`s purpose in attracting the world of racing to this gargantuan Meydan meeting is obviously bearing fruit.

Dettori`s front-running victory in the Gr1 Godolphin Mile on Raging Torrent followed the combination`s victory in a Grade 1 in Santa Anita, California - but in Meydan it was for reward three times greater than the horse`s Stateside prize money of £464,000.

With typical ebullience Dettori said: “If the others pressure him they`re playing Russian roulette – nobody`s going to take me on. He`s a very sensible horse.”

The responsibility of being the world`s top-rated turf racehorse, Hong Kong superstar Romantic Warrior, was too big a burden and he was defeated at long odds on attempting a ninth straight win. His race, the £2.3m to the winner Gr1 Turf over nine furlongs was won, narrowly, by the Japanese-bred and trained Soul Rush, ridden by French-based Italian Christian Demuro.

The winner may come to the UK for the Juddmonte International – the racing world has indeed shrunk with distance no obstacle to the major players.

Dettori 54 and five feet four could surely have paid a lump sum of the money he disputes with the taxman had his mount held on (the day before Trump`s earthshaking tariffs).

The Irish Exchequer, a small country which punches far far above its weight in international racing, was clobbered with a swingeing twenty per cent American tariff. Their economy as helped by the £696.000 the sprint mare Believing paid back against the £3m she cost Coolmore at last year`s Newmarket Horses in Training Sales. Narrowly beaten for Group One honours on round the world trips for the Britain`s Highclere Syndicates as a three-year-old, Believing finally got her due at the highest level in the Group One £696,000 six furlong Al Quoz Sprint. With Ryan Moore, Coolmore`s jockey, engaged in Australia, Sheikh Mohammed`s jockey William Buick took over.

“She`s very uncomplicated,” said Buick. “She really did want it.”

Otherwise the world`s richest race-meeting was a triumph for the Japanese taking three of the huge prizes. The ‘home` side had won the first of the eight races, put back from the 39c heat of the day to the cool of the evening, through the remarkable nine-year-old Dubai Future trained by Saeed bin Suroor for Sheikh Mohammed`s Godolphin operation. It was their lone victory.

Dubai Duty Free sponsor meetings throughout the year in Britain beginning with Newbury in mid-April, where the first UK Classic Trials are held. Dubai Future regularly flies UAE`s flag at Newbury for sums engulfed by the extravagances in Meydan and the majority of Dubai Future`s earnings had come in Bahrain. In the opening race on Dubai ‘s big night the nine-year-old son of Dubawi doubled his career total to £1.7m.

The Dubai World Cup clashed, on that first Saturday in April, with “the World`s greatest race” – for its universal appeal the Grand National steeplechase at Aintree retains that title. This season`s renewal of the race first run in 1839 (the year of Jamsetji Tata`s birth) added to its fabled history. And this year the accolades were heaped on a single individual – Irish master trainer Willie Mullins. As were his fellow Irishmen, the late great Vincent O`Brien and the perennial champion flat trainer (no relation) Aidan O`Brien, Mullins is head and shoulders above his contemporaries. Once again he dominated last month`s Cheltenham Jumping Festival and, occasionally on the flat when he ‘stoops to conquer` he has winners at Royal Ascot and came close in the Melbourne Cup.

To saddle first three in the Grand National in a field of thirty-four (sixty-six is the record) – Mullins`s 33-1 outsiders, Nick Rockett and Grangeclare West sandwiched his favourite and the 2024 winner I Am Maximus – was an utterly unique achievement (Aidan O`Brien saddled the first three in the 2019 Prix de l`Arc de Triomphe) and may never be replicated.

Yet the true cause of Mullins`s uncharacteristic post-race tears was the fact that his winner was ridden by his amateur son Patrick. The trainer`s unsuspected emotion in the winner`s enclosure – which he visits so regularly – harmonized with an adoring crowd.

Indeed, emotion flows through the arteries of the Grand National - this year`s winner ran in the name of the partnership of Stewart and Sadie Andrews though Mrs Andrews died in 2022. Nick Rockett ran in her colours, orange and black. Another chapter, another fairy story in the race that is the compendium of all that racing fans wish for.

By contrast the start of the 2025 British flat turf season at the very end of March, gets lost in this cornucopia of international sport. The lure of the first ‘big` race of the season in Britain is a mere handicap worth £77,000 to the winner and though the race, the Lincoln, has a long tradition stretching back to 1853 (run at Doncaster since in 1965) – what used to be called the ‘Spring Double` is a lost heritage: bettors used to double up the mile flat handicap with the four-and-a-half-mile steeplechase, staged within a week of one another.

Racing ‘never sleeps` carrying on throughout the winter on sand domestically in Britain – with worldwide international diversions. Indeed this year`s Lincoln winner, Godwinson, is by Coolmore`s 2018 Two Thousand Guineas winner Saxon Warrior, himself registered as Japanese as a son of Japan`s all-time great stallion Deep Impact.

William Haggas is the most patient, and astute, of trainers, best known for his 2022 champion miler Baaeed and 1996 Derby winner Shaamit. He`s already had a Group One winner in Australia this year and holds the record of five Lincoln Handicap wins. With stable jockey Tom Marquand on international duty in Dubai, Godwinson was ridden by former champion Kieren Fallon`s son Cieren. Fallon senior won the race once, thirty-two years ago.

“We always try to set one up,” said Haggas whose speciality is targeting races and has the ammunition to take aim at much bigger prizes than the Lincoln Handicap this season.

The first two-year-old`s race of the season always has a debutant youngster laid out for Doncaster`s five furlong Brocklesby Stakes. Three years ago it was the Richard Hannon-trained favourite for Amo Racing who paid 4.4m for a record breaking yearling last year. Amo`s Norman`s Cay looks a bargain for 60,000, loose change for his owners who got back 20,000 for the Brocklesby. A couple of years back Amo (the brainchild of a leading football agent) had signalled their intent when they paid 225,000 for Persian Force who took his Brocklesby and went on to win the Gr 2 July Stakes later that summer. Norman`s Cay scraped home by a nose but may well develop over six furlongs

The Hannon family have a long association with Indian breeding. Quite apart from Richard Senior`s son in law Richard Hughes who made such a name for himself in Indian Classics and is now starting to emerge as a trainer with more than one Indian owner, the Hannon Two Thousand Guineas winners Tirol ‘87 and Don`t Forget Me ‘90 both of which found stud jobs in India, only last year Richard Hannon Jnr`s Chindit went to Poonawalla Studs.

The winning jockey in the £1m Grand National didn`t earn a penny – Patrick Mullins is a ‘Mr` an amateur – he doesn`t get paid. Maybe a film of the race will make him richer. Feature films have told the Grand National story before – 1981 winner Aldaniti whose jockey was recovering from cancer; Red Rum who won three times, 73-76 and was second in between; and then there was the fictitious fantasy film ‘National Velvet` with movie star Elizabeth Taylor as the ‘winning jockey` in 1945.

You might forget your wedding anniversary, the year we last won the Ashes, but you never forget the Grand National winners you backed. People with, otherwise no interest in racing, queue to bet on the race – in the way that the Melbourne Cup ‘stops the nation`. The excitement of involvement leaves watchers as exhausted as the participants…yet full of anticipation for the momentous deeds we can look forward to this Flat campaign.