The Aliysa affair: the day the Aga Khan turned his back on British racing

After the 1989 Oaks, photographs of the Aga Khan welcoming Aliysa into the winner’s enclosure at Epsom depict his beaming smile. He certainly had plenty to savour on that sunny afternoon 30 years ago.

Here was one more British Classic winner to close a memorable decade on a high. The previous year he’d stood in the very same spot after Kahyasi had won him the Derby for the third time in seven years. Now he had won the Oaks for the first time since he inherited his family’s bloodstock empire in 1960.

The Aga Khan had decided to have horses trained in Britain for the first time in 1978. Previously stationed in France, he sent yearlings to Fulke Johnson Houghton and Michael Stoute. It was Stoute who stood beside him now as the pair admired Aliysa, who’d just won her third race from as many starts by three lengths from Snow Bride.