Richard Fahey will bid to provide Sir Alex Ferguson with further international success when Spirit Dancer lines up in the Howden Neom Turf Cup on Saturday.

The seven-year-old gave the former Manchester United manager and his fellow owners, Ged Mason and Fred Done, a day to remember when scoring in the Bahrain International Trophy last November and attentions were soon turned to securing more valuable prizes in the region.

Spirit Dancer tuned up for his crack at this $2million prize by finishing fourth in Meydan’s Jebel Hatta last month and his handler believes that will have put him spot on for this Saudi Cup night assignment.

“I felt he would need the run the last day and it looked that way as well,” said Fahey.

“He has had four or five weeks to acclimatise now. It’s all stuff of dreams, which is becoming a reality when we get to run on Saturday.

“It’s fantastic here, we are well looked after and the horse is happy. When you come on these trips, the most important thing is how the horse is – and the horse is in good order. I’m very pleased with him and at the moment I wouldn’t swap my fella.”

Fahey admitted to being awestruck by the footballing great in the early stages of training for him, but now relishes the time they spend together comparing notes on how to prime star sporting talent for action.

“To be fair, when I first started training for him, I was a little bit humbled,” Fahey this week.

“I have some fantastic conversations with him and he has been to the yard three or four times now. He is just a wonderful man and you can see why he has been a success.

“It’s a humbling experience but it’s amazing, because even this (Thursday) morning we were discussing footballers and horses and Sir Alex was asking why we didn’t canter on the grass.

“I explained we race on the (grass) surfaces because if we were to train on them all the time, we wouldn’t have many horses left, so we tend to use the artificial surfaces – and he compared it to a very good football team whose training pitch was quite quick and a lot of the players were getting hurt, so there is comparisons with football and racing.”

There is plenty of British and Irish involvement in the extended 10-furlong event, with Aidan O’Brien’s Luxembourg a clear favourite with the bookmakers, having knocked on the door behind Auguste Rodin on home soil in the autumn before also going close in Hong Kong in December.

Andrew Balding’s The Foxes is another who is no stranger to international competition, having finished second in the Belmont Derby last summer, and the Dante winner is expected to take a step forward from his comeback run at Southwell recently.

A January afternoon at Rolleston is poles apart from the pressure cooker of Riyadh on Saudi Cup night, but connections are confident of a bold bid from their four-year-old.

“He’s got here in great form,” said the trainer’s wife and representative Anna Lisa Balding.

“I was very pleased with how he looked out there on Thursday morning.

“Last year, we took him to America and he finished second in a Grade One, so we felt he would be up to the travel again.

“We’re delighted with his position in gate six and Oisin Murphy is back on and he rides him so well. He needed the run last time at Southwell but it was a good effort and he will come on for it.”

John and Thady Gosden struck gold with subsequent Royal Ascot and Juddmonte International Stakes champion Mostahdaf 12 months ago and will look to repeat the dose with stable newcomer Jack Darcy.

Astro King has been something of a superstar for Daniel and Claire Kubler and their Cambridgeshire hero should not be underestimated after being far from disgraced in sixth behind Spirit Dancer last time.

“With a little more luck, he might well have placed second or third (in Bahrain),” said Claire Kubler.

“He was on the rail in Bahrain and ran into traffic. It was frustrating but we had to notice that it was established horses like Point Lonsdale and Nations Pride that were in his path and he was finishing stronger than them.

“It’s amazing for our team and his owners to be a part of this occasion. It’s so exciting and we feel he can run well.”

Multiple Group One winner Luxembourg starts his season in the Howden Neom Turf Cup in Riyadh on Saturday, with trainer Aidan O’Brien expecting him to return better than ever this year.

The five-year-old was last seen finishing a close second to Romantic Warrior in the Hong Kong Cup, prior to which he was runner-up in both the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prince of Wales’s Stakes.

His season did include a win, however, and a significant one at that, as he landed the Tattersalls Gold Cup at elite level at the Curragh in May.

There had been discussions about starting his campaign in the Saudi Cup itself and experimenting with running the son of Camelot on dirt for the first time, but it was ultimately decided that he would stick to turf for now.

“We’re looking forward to it, we were surprised at the way he got over the (dirt) track,” said O’Brien.

“Everyone’s very excited to see him. He’s a big, powerful, long-striding horse. A good, scopey horse, with a good mind and very sound.

“We think we haven’t seen the best of him yet, all through this year and next year he’s going to be a horse to really look forward to.

“He’s big with a long stride and often those types of horses take until four or five to really become strong enough to use their stride.

“He had a lean enough body, but his body is getting stronger all the time.”

“We were in two minds about it, the Saudi Cup is probably the most exciting race in the world. We were going to go there and take our chance, but then last minute we thought it was the wrong thing for the horse this early in the season.

“It’s the race everyone wants to win and we nearly did it, maybe we thought it might be safer to do it the other way and maybe we could go there with him next year.

“We will experiment, maybe we should have done it this time but we definitely will, he could go to Dubai and it’s very possible he’ll go there on the grass as well.

“Then we might think about switching over for the second half of the year, something like that.”

Also in the race are Daniel and Claire Kubler’s Astro King and Andrew Balding’s The Foxes, with John and Thady Gosden running Jack Darcy and Richard Fahey represented by Bahrain International Trophy winner Spirit Dancer.

O’Brien has a further hope at the meeting in Tower Of London, who lines up in the Red Sea Turf Handicap over a mile and seven furlongs.

The four-year-old was twice a winner last term and was unlucky to miss out on a Group Three success when going down by just a head in the Bahrain Trophy Stakes at Newmarket.

His three-year-old season ended in September, so he returns from a significant break, but his trainer has been pleased with his preparation for the race and expects him to perform well.

“He’s been off a good while and he’s carrying a little bit of weight, but he’s been working very well,” O’Brien said.

“We always thought the trip would suit him well and this type of race would suit him well.

“He has plenty of weight but he’s a classy horse, we think that ridden a little bit patiently and gently we will see a very big run from him.”

Sir Alex Ferguson “never dreamed” that he would have a horse good enough to take on the best in the world on the international stage. But in Spirit Dancer – a horse he bred – that is exactly what he is doing.

The former Manchester United manager has become immersed in the racing world since his retirement, enjoying several high-profile victories in the National Hunt sphere.

To date, his Flat exploits had not reached the same heights. But the Richard Fahey-trained seven-year-old Spirit Dancer has started to change all that.

Winning the Strensall Stakes at York last summer earned him an invite for the Bahrain International Trophy, which he won, and he was last seen finishing a respectable fourth in the Group One Jebel Hatta at Meydan in Dubai.

He now runs in the Howden Neom Turf Cup on Saturday in Riyadh, a race worth almost £1million to the winner.

“One of the great advantages of having a really good horse is international racing. We never dreamed, when I bred Spirit Dancer, that he would end up getting as far as this,” Ferguson told The Saudi Cup.

“We’re so excited about it and after Bahrain we are quite optimistic.

“He had a little problem when he was three years of age, he got over that and he’s just got better and better. He’s not had a lot of racing. That’s what Richard keeps saying, that he can race a lot more than he’s been doing. So we’re getting the benefit.

“The international element is something we didn’t expect. I’d been to Dubai some years back and I was saying to myself I wonder what it’s like to have a horse involved in it – now we’ve got one, I’m enjoying it.

“Competing with the likes of Aidan O’Brien and the Japanese, you know you are up against the best, and we’re enjoying it.”

Ferguson’s racing interests stretch back almost 30 years now, and it is fair to say he is more involved than at any time in his life.

“It was round about 1995 that I remember my wife saying I was going to kill myself because my whole day was absorbed with the (football) club,” he explained.

“One day, I said to my wife ‘shall we go to the races?’. She asked where that had come from and I told her it was her who said I needed to start doing something else.

“We were at the races one day when I met John Mulhern and Dessie Scahill and I got hooked. She once said ‘you want to buy all the right horses’, well, I’m trying!

“I got into breeding by accident, I was in Germany visiting Andreas Wohler and he put the idea in my mind, I bought a horse from him, the mare Queen’s Dream (Spirit Dancer’s dam).

“A friend of mine then put the idea in my head about buying the stud in Hemel Hempstead. I said we’d have a go and it’s been great. They are fantastic people there, we had a foal there last week by Stradivarius, so it’s great.”

It is Ferguson’s second trip to Saudi Arabia, the first was in 2008 when Manchester United played in a testimonial to honour local player Sam Al Jaber, who played over 150 times for his country.

“We came to Saudi about 15 years ago to play in a game to celebrate a famous player who had 150 international caps. The King bought 80,000 tickets and gave them all away to the people and it was fantastic,” said Ferguson.

Spirit Dancer is co-owned by bookmaker Fred Done and Ferguson’s big friend, Ged Mason, with whom he is involved with most of his horses – and who initiated a rather painful celebration in Bahrain.

“Ged broke my rib celebrating in Bahrain, I won’t mind him breaking another if it means we win!” said Ferguson.

Mason is loving being involved in the ride and is thrilled at the enjoyment Ferguson is getting from the game.

“When he came round the bend at Bahrain, it was a fantastic sight and the way he pulled away was a pinch yourself moment, to be honest,” said Mason.

“He got the invite to Bahrain because he’d produced the goodies at York. I’m so proud for Sir Alex because he bred him and he’s out of Frankel.

“I think our first venture into ownership was What A Friend and what a friend he was to us, he got our appetite for winning. Clan Des Obeaux won King Georges and Irish Gold Cups, it’s been a fantastic journey and we don’t want it to stop.”

Aidan O’Brien has confirmed his multiple Group One winner Luxembourg an intended runner in the $2million Howden Neom Turf Cup in Saudi Arabia next weekend.

The son of Camelot has struck gold three times at the highest level, with a Group One juvenile win at Doncaster followed by success in the 2022 Irish Champion Stakes and last season’s Tattersalls Gold Cup.

The five-year-old had the option of having a first start on dirt in the Saudi Cup itself in Riyadh, but is instead set to stick to the Group Two turf feature on the undercard.

O’Brien said: “It’s his first run back after a little break and we just felt it (Saudi Cup) was going to be too tough a race to pitch him into for his first time on dirt.

“The competition is very strong, and he’s never run on the surface before, so we thought it was a bit too much to ask of him. The Neom Turf Cup will suit him better.”

Luxembourg was last seen going down by a short head to Romantic Warrior in the Hong Kong Cup in December and his trainer has been pleased with how he has recovered from those exertions.

“We’ve been very happy with him since Hong Kong. It was the first time he’d been on a long trip abroad and he ran a great race and took the travel very well,” O’Brien added.

“We were very pleased with the run and he’s been in good form since. Hopefully, he runs well in the Neom Turf Cup and maybe that opens up the option of Dubai.

“He could be a horse that travels a lot over the coming year. He’s got a very high level of form and some solid foundations to build from.

“The Neom Turf Cup looks ideal. Everyone has been very complimentary about the track in Riyadh, and we think it’s a track that will really suit him, and obviously the prize-money is very good, so we had to consider it.

“The Saudi Cup meeting is a very important festival now and it’s great to be going there with a couple of good chances.”

The Ballydoyle handler will also saddle St Leger fourth Tower Of London in the Red Sea Turf Handicap.

O’Brien said: “Tower Of London has had a good long break all winter. We’ve aimed him at the Red Sea Turf as we think both the trip and nice ground will really suit him.

“We certainly think he’s a horse that’s going to progress a lot this season, so he could be a horse that goes onto Dubai after this.”