Sheikh Mohammed
Born in 1949, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is the UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, the second-largest of the seven states that make up the United Arab Emirates.
Sheikh Mohammed studied in Cambridge as a young man and it was then that he attended his first horse race - watching Royal Palace win the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket with his older brother Sheikh Hamdan.
Ten years later Hatta became the first winning racehorse owned by Sheikh Mohammed. Since then Sheikh Mohammed's horses have won almost every major race in the world, running in both his maroon and white colours and the famous blue colours of Godolphin, the globetrotting racing stable he set up in 1994.
In 1996 he founded the Dubai World Cup - the world's richest horse race - designed to encourage other owners to bring their horses to Dubai to compete for millions of dollars in prize money.
The Dubai World Cup was also created to attract visitors to Dubai and millions of people now travel there every year for a holiday or to use one of the many business centres that have been built there in the past few years.
As well as being a racehorse owner Sheikh Mohammed is himself an expert horseman and has won many endurance races.
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