With runners throughout the Victoria Racing Club's spring carnival at Flemington - including Requiem in the Melbourne Cup and Milanova in the VRC Oaks - multi- millionaire racehorse owner Robert Sangster was not exactly under-represented during Australian racing's greatest week.
But the English bloodstock magnate, who first came into Australian racing nearly 25 years ago, could well be a more visible figure than ever on the turf next year if he reverses a long established policy of "selling everything" and opts to race more of his own stock.
"Normally our policy has been to sell, but whether we keep doing that ...," he said, his voice trailing off.
"I am not getting any younger and I probably need a bit of fun. It's all right getting the bank balance in the black all the time but it's not much fun looking at a bank balance.
"I probably will race after this year a lot more. I am selling again nearly everything this year, but I think my policy is going to change and have the colours race again. I don't mind the bank balance, I would rather have a bit of fun."
Fun, on and off the track, and success are two things the 66-year-old Sangster, who parlayed his wealth into a huge bloodstock empire throughout the northern and southern hemispheres, has enjoyed all through an eventful life.
Always an innovator and a man with a shrewd appreciation of value, price and market conditions, Sangster (valued this year by Britain's Sunday Times Rich List as being worth $236 million) has owned some of the most successful racehorses in Europe and Australia in the past 30 years and been a catalyst for some of the most sweeping changes in the international bloodstock sector.
He was one of the first to realise how much money could be made out of shuttling stallions through two hemispheres and pioneered the travel between Europe and Australia of some of the world's leading sires (such as present champion Danehill), enabling them to cover twice as many mares - thus generating twice as much revenue.
It was Sangster who was, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, a member of British racing's "Holy Trinity" (along with master trainer Vincent O'Brien and legendary jockey Lester Piggot).
This trio adopted a revolutionary approach to buying yearlings, racing them and turning them into highly successful and fashionable sires, reckoning that the big money in racing - in Britain at least - was to be had in generating income from stallion fees rather than earning prizemoney.
Thus Sangster's chequebook bankrolled swashbuckling raids on the biggest yearling sales in America and Europe to buy some of the best bred, most blue-blooded yearlings available.
Their rationale was simple, as they knew that should a handful of these gallopers win the hallowed classic races in England, France or Ireland (the 2000 Guineas, English Derby, Irish Derby, Prix du Jockey Club and St Leger for three-year-olds, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the Eclipse Stakes or the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe for older horses), they would be worth many times their multi-million-dollar purchase price as yearlings.
"That's why we started to own our own stallions. We bought Deep Diver, a champion sprinter, and Green God, then we bought Sun Prince from Arnold Weinstock and then we thought why are we buying these off other people and letting them make money. We have got the best trainer in the world right on our doorstep - why don't we go to Vincent."
And so they did. As Sangster explains, O'Brien had to put up 15 per cent of the purchase price of the yearling "but he got a free 10 per cent, so he owned 25 per cent of every yearling that we bought. I owned 40 per cent John (Magnier, of Coolmore Stud) took 15 per cent, and then we would look at outside investors".
It was a strategy that enabled the triumvirate to dominate for a 15-year period before the even wealthier Maktoum family became serious horse players and began a spending spree that shows little sign of stopping.
Sangster has, in the past decade, scaled back his interests and has not hesitated to sell any horse - including classic winners - if the price is right, often to Arab interests.
But before the Maktoum's ascendancy, ruthlessly exploiting the efficacy of the fabled Northern Dancer bloodline, he raced gallopers in Britain of the calibre of dual derby winner The Minstrel (1977), Assert (French and Irish derbies, 1982), Golden Fleece (English Derby, 1982), Alleged (Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, 1978-79), Detroit (Arc, 1981) and the horse who is regarded as the best stallion in the world, Sadlers Wells, successful in the Irish 2000 Guineas in 1984.
But his innovation was not confined to the breeding shed and sale ring. He broke new ground in Britain when he imported American legend Willy Shoemaker to England in 1978 to ride his horse Hawaiian Sound in the English Derby.
Although many of the experts scoffed, Shoemaker rated the horse in front perfectly only to be caught right on the line by the favourite, Shirley Heights.
Sangster then brought the teenage prodigy from America, Steve Cauthen, to be his stable rider in 1979 and later brought another leading American to Europe in Cash Asmussen, who successfully based himself in France for many years.
Sangster is credited by many as being the figure most responsible for selling Australian racing to overseas owners after teaming with Colin Hayes in the late 1970s, the pair enjoying a near immediate dividend with Beldale Ball, winner of the 1980 Melbourne Cup.
Sangster has won most of the great races here; in addition to a Melbourne Cup he has won Sydney, Perth and Adelaide cups (Our Paddy Boy and Marooned, whom he declared a certainty, gave him victories at Randwick), as well as Golden Slippers and Newmarket Handicaps with the likes of Marauding, Special and Isca, and the Victoria Derby three years ago with Blackfriars.
Looking back over a lifetime in the sport, he said that the best horse he was associated with was El Gran Senor, a three-year-old who won the English 2000 Guineas in 1984 and was just touched off by Secreto in the English Derby before winning the Irish equivalent, and The Minstrel, a tough-as-teak chestnut, who won at both Epsom and the Curragh in 1977.
Alleged winning the Arc both times, and Detroit also winning the Arc are other victories he highlights.
Sangster agrees that the Melbourne Cup is now the pre-eminent stayers race in the world and, although a citizen and resident of Barbados, he loves being in Australia at this time of the year.
"I don't think there's anywhere in the world where you get three big race days in the week where you get more than 100,000 people at the races. I believe in open competition and it's (the cup) the No.1 stayers' race in the world.
"When I first came out, it was just like a jumps race at Cheltenham (the major British jumping race carnival), but now the standard has improved, the prizemoney has improved, it's great.
"So many people at the Breeders' Cup in America were very jealous that I was having a lot of fun at the Melbourne Cup this week," he said with a smile.