Horses are Big in Kentucky
By Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum is an odd entry into the pantheon of Kentucky heroes:
Most of them, however, know him as Sheik Mo, a horseman who for nearly 25 years has arrived each year at Blue Grass Airport by private jumbo jet and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on horses.
Although the sheik and the company his family controls encountered security concerns and had to abandon an attempt to run six United States port operations in March, he is treated like a fellow horseman here in Lexington, home of his thriving racing and breeding business.
In a relatively short time, Sheik Mohammed and members of his royal family have joined the ranks of the blue-blooded Phipps family and the more commercially driven Overbrook Farm as fabled names in horse racing in the United States.
You wouldn’t think that a plane that big could land at Bluegrass Airport until you see it sitting there.