Searching my memory, but I am not sure I had really grasped, pre-UAE, that the main event of the Dubai World Cup offered the biggest cash prize of any horse race/meet.

The race is worth $10 million, with $6 million going to the winner.

That’s a lot of oats and alfalfa.

The Dubai World Cup went off today. A few observations.

–Every thoroughbred in the world by now carries the genes of the three stallions considered to be the forefathers of the whole line, and two of them came from Arabia — the Godolphin Arabian and the Darley Arabian. For this and other reasons, Gulf Arabs love horses. They feel as if the really fast ones are local creations, ultimately.

–Football/soccer is the most popular sport in the UAE, but racing horses would be second, with racing camels probably third. If “falconry” were more clearly a recognized sport, it would be in the mix. (Local note: The shorthand here is that the sheikhs of Abu Dhabi, the Al Nahyans, prefer football, and that the sheikhs of Dubai, the Maktoums, prefer the ponies.)

–Horses are raced throughout the UAE during the cooler months; the season ended tonight. Abu Dhabi has a weekly meet. Sharjah has a track. Dubai has two, at Jebel Ali and the big one, Meydan Racecourse, which hosts the Dubai World Cup. Many of Europe’s top trainers and jockeys migrate to the UAE during the North American winter, because this is where the money is.

–The “Dubai World Cup” can be a confusing name. Because it may refer either to the whole of the race card on the last Saturday of March or to the big race at the end of the program. Either way, it’s as big as it gets, in terms of money. In nine races, total, $27.25 million is disbursed. Much of that is in the $10 million main event, but two other races are worth $5 million each, the Dubai Duty Free and the Dubai Sheema Classic. Five more are worth “only” $2 million or $1 million, and the first race, for Purebred Arabians, awards $250,000.

–Much of the money in modern thoroughbred racing can be traced to the Gulf, and particularly to Dubai and the royals there, led by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the emir. Those who follow the horses in England have no problem in saying horse racing in Britain would be dead-dead-dead without the money pumped into the industry from the Gulf.

—Godolphin Racing is one of the world’s biggest racing operations, if not the biggest. Sheikh Mohammed runs it.

–Racing is popular in Arabia despite the Islamic proscription against gambling. Exactly. They go to races, and watch horses run, and you can’t find a betting window on the grounds. Does that make Emiratis better horse racing fans? Probably so.

–It is not at all clear if the generic sports fan in the U.S. grasps that the biggest horse event in the world goes down in Dubai every year. The average Yank probably would tell you the Kentucky Derby is the world’s most important race (despite a purse of only $2 million), and that the Breeders’ Cup is the most important racing card, which is not at all clear. We do know it offers a bit less money than the Dubai World Cup. Having overseen coverage of both events (in The National, this past week), I can tell you that the Dubai World Cup seems to generate more global interest, perhaps also because Dubai is sort of half way between the Far East and North America, and the trip is grueling for everyone — but not impossible.

–The average American sports fan also probably does not know how important American-bred thoroughbreds have been to the big race here. The first Dubai World Cup, in 1996, was won by Cigar, routinely referred to in equine circles as “the super horse Cigar”.

No fewer than nine of the 18 winners of Dubai’s richest race have been based in the U.S., including this year’s winner, the enormous beast Animal Kingdom.

Animal Kingdom no doubt will always be known in the U.S. as, first, the winner of the 2011 Kentucky Derby. In the rest of the world, Animal Kingdom is now known as the winner of the Dubai World Cup.

We Yanks can be a little insular when it comes to a variety of topics. Not fully appreciating the Dubai World Cup is on the list.