How the awards took off - and why I feel so lucky to have been involved

Sheikh Mohammed has backed some great new ideas – the Racing Post was one of them – but, whisper it softly, even this publication cannot pretend to have won the universal appreciation now given to the Godolphin Stud and Stable Staff Awards.

For even attending the presentation can give you feelings driven deep into those of us lucky enough to have been involved from the start. It is a feeling of both humility and pride. Humility at how light our own workloads seem compared to the routines so passionately embraced by the often 'fish out of water' recipients on the stage. Pride that our game has found a means of celebrating the winners in a way that makes them the most important people in the room.

To be fair, much of the credit for this comes from a condition imposed by Sheikh Mohammed back in 2004. It was that any money put up would go directly to the prize winners. How the competition was run was up to what was then the BHB and anyone they dragged in to help . . . such as me. The implication was obvious – make it work!