Kia Joorabchian has spent big in the off-season but will it pay off? | Greg Wood

For more than a quarter of a millennium – 254 years, to precise – Tuesday’s Craven meeting has been the moment when British Flat racing emerges from its long winter hibernation at the start of a new season. The first Classics are less than a month away and the Derby and Royal Ascot not too far behind. It is a time for optimism, anticipation and, for Newmarket in particular, a renewed sense of purpose, as the Suffolk town, where Charles II founded the first racing stable in the mid-17th century, prepares for the seven-month campaign on turf.

It is much the same blend of hope and expectation that grips football fans. The pre-season is complete, the new signings – and perhaps a new manager, too – are bedding themselves in and it is time to find out how they all measure up to the competition. For one of racing’s more recent arrivals in the top flight, there is the added pressure of needing to justify a huge off-season splurge in the market in an attempt to compete with the traditional heavyweights.

There have been many statements of intent from Kia Joorabchian’s Amo Racing since the high-profile football agent was first bitten by the racing bug in 2017, but nothing to match his outlay on bloodstock and property in the autumn and winter of 2024. Joorabchian took the Book 1 sale at Tattersalls in Newmarket, Europe’s premier yearling sale, by storm last October, when he outspent even the Godolphin operation, which is backed by the sovereign wealth of its founder, Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, on the opening day.

Amo’s 25 purchases at the three-day auction – some of which were bought with associates including Evangelos Marinakis, the owner of Nottingham Forest, and the Qatar-backed Al Shaqab operation – included a Frankel filly for 4.4m gns (£4.6m); a Wootton Bassett colt who set a record of 4.3m gns for a yearling colt sold at auction in Europe; and a sister to Alpinista, the 2022 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner, for 2.5m gns.

Proven older horses were also recruited to run in Amo’s increasingly familiar purple colours, including You Got To Me, last year’s Irish Oaks winner, for 4.8m gns. She will be aimed towards the Coronation Cup at Epsom in June before eventually joining Amo’s rapidly expanding band of broodmares.

Perhaps Joorabchian’s most eye-catching investment was in Freemason Lodge Stables in Newmarket where the now-retired Sir Michael Stoute trained for much of his outstanding career.

You Got To Me won the Irish Oaks last year and was bought by Kia Joorabchian for 4.8m gns. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

Newmarket has had many high-spending new owners blow into town over the decades and plenty have blown out again after a few years of trying, and failing, to establish themselves among the elite.

In the early years of Joorabchian’s time in racing, there were many who felt that regular sackings of trainers and jockeys, sometimes apparently as the result of a single below-par performance, betrayed an impatience for success that did not bode well, for his blood pressure or his longer-term involvement.

The purchase of Freemason Lodge, though, feels like the clearest sign yet that Joorabchian is now in it for the long haul. The chosen successor to Stoute, Henry Cecil and Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochfort at one of Newmarket’s most historic stables, is Raphael Freire, who is just shy of his 30th birthday and likely to oversee an ever-expanding string of Amo-owned horses at the Bury Road yard.

Freire is by no means the only trainer on Amo’s roster. Ralph Beckett – who was sacked by Joorabchian as long ago as 2021 but subsequently reemployed – remains the trainer of You Got To Me and will also train the top lot from the Book 1 sale. George Scott, Charlie Johnston and Karl Burke are among several other leading yards with Amo-owned horses.

But having taken charge the pressure will be on Freire, a former jockey from Brazil whose father and grandfather were trainers. His first significant runner from Freemason Lodge will be Benevento, who holds an entry in the 2,000 Guineas, in Wednesday’s Craven Stakes.

Aidan O’Brien’s Ballydoyle is once again likely to be the stable to beat in the Flat’s Group One showpiece events, alongside other traditional powerhouses including Godolphin, Juddmonte and Shadwell. Like Marinakis’s football team, Amo is aiming to disrupt the established order at the top and it will be fascinating to chart the progress of their big-money signings as the season unfolds.