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It was during his High School years in Centerville, Ohio that Watson was introduced to racing by his friend Austin Smith, whose father owned Woodburn Farm, a leading producer [of thoroughbred racehorses] in Ohio at the time. “Basically, we were hanging out at the farm” he explained. “I never really worked with the horses, but I started going racing with him and his father. I went to the backside a few times with them and loved it.”
“That first World Cup, everybody was pitching in, it was such a small community of race people here at the time. I don’t think Satish had any runners on the night, so Lord John Fitzgerald asked me to drive the ambulance. I never got in it, nothing happened thank goodness. I just remember sitting in the vet’s room cheering on Cigar. It was really exciting having him come half way round the world. He was some horse.
From High School he went to college in Chicago, gaining a degree in Finance, but soon found he was missing the racing. After talking to George Smith, Austin’s father, he decided to give racing a go and, returning to Chicago, he walked the track at Arlington. He admits he was clueless, but got a job with Clint Goodrich, with whom he went to Florida and then Keenland. “It was Keenland that really made me realise that this was what I wanted to do. I just loved it, it was great racing.” Moving to Jesus Suarez, who trained Smith’s horses, he met Susan Sanderson, on a visit to her sister who was walking hots at Suarez’s yard. Sanderson was assistant to Satish Seemar in Dubai and she asked if he’d like to come out. Faced with a choice between Turfway Park in the winter, which he describes as ‘horrible’ or trying to get a job in Florida, Watson met Seemar and decided to ‘give it a go for a year’. “And 23 years later,”he smiles “I’m still here. “I was really only in the game for two years before I got out here. In September 1993 I guess it was the same amount of stables as we have now, but with less horses - there was Satish, Kiaran McLaughlin, Paddy Rudkin, Bill Mather, Dhruba Selvaratnam, Erwan Charpy. So roughly the same, but it was all domestic races, no carnival. There was like a jockeys’ challenge one month and then in 1996 they started the World Cup, on the final day of the season.
Watson watches Paddys Day in the paddock at Meydan
“That was fun and got it all started. Originally racing over here was an advertisement for the country, nobody in America knew where Dubai was. It was growing so much at the time. All of a sudden the racing industry then knew about Dubai, learned that it wasn't part of Saudi Arabia, because that’s what everyone thought at the time!” He laughs. “I’d asked Kiaran McLaughlin one day at Jebel Ali if I could get more experience by working for him and he said ‘sure’. Satish was great for me and we had good times there, but the chance to work for McLaughlin who’d been assistant to D Wayne Lukas, and you know, two Americans together, we got on really well, so it all worked out.”
THE ARABIAN RACEHORSE