Dubai declared a 10-day mourning period after Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum died on Monday at 76. The announcement came from the Dubai Media Office, and Sheikh Mohammed responded with a tribute that called him his brother.
Sheikh Mohammed wrote: "May God have mercy on Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. May God have mercy on you, my brother. You have settled with a Generous and Great Lord. You are absent from our eyes but not from our prayers and hearts, O Ahmed." He added: "May God make you dwell in the vast expanses of His Paradise and inspire us and your loved ones with patience and solace. And to God we belong, and to Him we shall return."
Dubai and Sheikh Mohammed
The mourning period gives the death an official public frame inside Dubai, where the ruler’s younger brother was a royal figure and a familiar name in horse racing. Sheikh Ahmed had been part of a family that shaped Thoroughbred racing and breeding over decades, but he was described as more private than Sheikh Mohammed, Sheikh Maktoum, and Sheikh Hamdan.
That private profile sat beside a public record in racing. His colours, yellow silks with black epaulettes, were carried by major winners across years, and his operation continued to produce notable horses this season.
Sheikh Ahmed's racing colours
Wassl won the 1983 Irish 2,000 Guineas in Sheikh Ahmed’s colours. Mtoto followed with back-to-back wins in the Eclipse Stakes and the Prince of Wales's Stakes in 1987 and 1988, then added the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes in 1988 before finishing second to Tony Bin in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.
More recently, Saddadd won the Grosser Preis von Baden earlier this month and the G3 Gordon Richards Stakes, while Quddwah won the G2 Zabeel Mile at Meydan on January 2, then the G2 Singspiel Stakes, the G2 Solonoway Stakes at the recent Irish Champions Festival, and finished second to Godolphin’s Ombudsman in the G1 Dubai Turf. Almaqam won the G1 Tattersalls Gold Cup and was beaten by Item in the G1 Juddmonte International.
Meydan and the mourning period
The practical effect of a 10-day mourning period is an official public observance rather than a racing schedule on its own. For readers around Dubai’s racing world, the immediate change is the formal recognition of a death that reaches from the ruler’s family to the horses that carried Sheikh Ahmed’s colours for decades.
What remains in front of Sheikh Ahmed’s family is the period itself, and the tribute already placed on record by Sheikh Mohammed. The announcement stands as the public marker of loss, while the racing results behind his name show how far his influence ran before Monday.
