Steve Cauthen: 'If Godolphin had been created earlier, I might not have retired'

Legendary jockey Steve Cauthen has admitted that he might have had second thoughts about his early retirement had Sheikh Mohammed created Godolphin just a couple of years earlier.

Cauthen was speaking to the Racing Post as part of a major interview in Sunday's newspaper in which he reflects upon returning to Britain this summer for the first time in 30 years, his relationship with the late Lester Piggott and the issues with his weight that ultimately drove him to quit the saddle at the age of just 32 in 1992.

At the start of 1991, Cauthen had been paid a reported £1 million annual retainer for a two-year contract with Sheikh Mohammed, whose first Group 1 winner he had ridden in the 1,000 Guineas on Oh So Sharp in 1985.

Oh So Sharp: won the fillies' Triple Crown for Steve Cauthen and Sheikh Mohammed in 1985Credit: Cranham Gerry

However, the stint didn't prove as enticing as it might have appeared at face value, with a notable disappointment with Arazi – beaten at odds-on in the 1993 Kentucky Derby – exacerbated by the fact Sheikh Mohammed had horses with 40 different trainers in Britain and Ireland in those pre-Godolphin days.

"I spent most of my time trying to figure out who had the best horses, and where I should be," he said. "It was a hard thing to do. And in the two years I rode for the sheikh it was during the Gulf War, when his mind was in other places. I had few conversations with him. He was only hearing from the side what was going on with the horses."

Within little more than a year of Cauthen turning down the offer of a reduced retainer for 1993 and instead retiring, Sheikh Mohammed's operation was very different. Godolphin's first great success story, Balanchine, joined the experimental team in Dubai at the end of 1993 before winning the 1,000 Guineas in 1994, under Frankie Dettori when it might have been Cauthen.

"Had they created Godolphin while I was still in England, I wouldn't have been so willing to walk away," he revealed. "All the sheikh's good horses came to be in one place, mostly stakes horses not required to carry low weights.

"It could have been different but I don't live and regret, I move forward. There wasn't a whole lot wrong with the way it was anyway."

Read more from Steve Cauthen in The Big Read, available in Sunday's newspaper or online for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers from 6pm on Saturday. Click here to sign up.

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