You might remember that I mentioned His Excellency Mansoor Abulhoul, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the UK, a couple of weeks ago. I was so blown away by his assessment of horse racing in this country, and the potential it has to build lucrative and cultural relationships around the world, that I gallivanted up to London to drop in on him at the UAE embassy.

I was in bad shape. Prior to my visit, I had a gazillion red blood cells injected into a torn tendon in my elbow. OMG. I’ve never been stabbed but I think I now have a pretty good idea what it must feel like. The slightest movement was sending excruciating pains up my arm, causing me to screw my face up and make noises like ‘yaieeeee’. I fear I may have alarmed the ambassador as we chatted over coffee in a beautifully cool reception room. Big chairs, leather-bound works of British poets lining the walls.

The UAE ambassador learned to ride at the Dubai riding club when he was five, and horses got into his blood

His Excellency learned to ride at the Dubai riding club when he was five, and horses got into his blood. Horse racing is a worldwide community that always welcomes boyish enthusiasm. The young Mansoor Abulhoul ended up doing a year of ‘hard yakka’ at a pre-training yard near Newmarket before spending a season with the genius but explosive trainer David Elsworth, who called him Victor for the duration of his apprenticeship. We can safely assume that the ambassador is a grafter who can take a rollicking. When he got back to Dubai he realised he didn’t have a proper plan to be a trainer, so he joined his family’s retail business.

But all that mucking out hadn’t been wasted. He met a French filly on the racecourse with a black-type pedigree, and a racecourse romance became a marriage made in Meydan.

Victoria Devin is racing royalty in France. Her great-grandmother, Elisabeth Couturié, owned the 1961 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes winner Right Royal, and her family still owns and operates the phenomenal Haras De Mesnil stud near Le Mans where Doctor Dino, Telecaster and Bay Bridge are stallions.

It’s a small world. As we spoke, a three-year-old gelding by trainer Willie Mullins’sgo-to stallion Doctor Dino was making €225,000 in the ring in Ireland.

Even if his wife’s heart no doubt rests in France, the ambassador is an incredible advocate for British racing: ‘The convening power of British racing has this “wow factor”. This is where it all began and events like Royal Ascot have a huge diplomatic engagement. You just can’t underestimate the power that British racing has.’ And it isn’t long before we’re speculating when the champion five-year-old Ombudsman will lock horns with the best three-year-old this year, Constitution River, who won the Coral Eclipse at Sandown last weekend.

He is way too diplomatic to criticise our country in any way, but he reminds me of the leverage Dubai has created over the past 30 years, attracting people from around the globe to the Dubai World Cup.

The ambassador’s eyes really lit up, though, when he talked about one of the smaller emirates, Umm Al Quwain, where he used to ride in pony shows when he was younger. In fact he is passionate about all the emirates. ‘Ras Al Khaimah joined the union in 1972, and they have some big projects coming along. It’s a very prominent emirate. Fujairah in the east is also now very important with its access to the Indian Ocean.

‘The UAE always had resilience and preparedness in the front of its mind, but being able to form a land bridge between Abu Dhabi and Fujairah has been important. So a lot of cargo is moving through Fujairah’s ports. I think their future will be very prosperous and more important to us. The pipeline from Abu Dhabi to their ports has carried 180,000 barrels of oil a day, but that will increase.’

Sharjah is the third largest emirate. Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, its ruler, is a graduate of Exeter university. The resulting reciprocal relationship is another reminder that close links with the Middle East are so important.

‘Dubai has secured itself through aviation, lifestyle and its financial sector,’ the ambassador told me. ‘It was driven by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is an inventor, a creator. He wanted 110 per cent all the time. He had this huge fire in his belly and he got things done.’

Nevertheless, Abu Dhabi is very much the capital. ‘It feels like Washington. It’s where the federal government is housed, it had the natural resources, the strategic military capability and the relationships around the world. But Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who ruled Abu Dhabi from 1966, knew they had to work together and understood the prominence of Dubai.’

The unity of the seven emirates is so striking, in contrast to our dis-United Kingdom. And we disrespect our attributes. I felt quite angry as I walked away from the embassy down Grosvenor Crescent. We have Wimbledon, Ascot, Lord’s, Cheltenham and the Premier League, and we once had unique countryside sports loved by people from countries which don’t have such treasures.

But instead of supporting those endeavours, which incidentally bring in billions of pounds of investment, hundreds of thousands of pounds in taxation and tens of thousands of jobs, successive governments have done sod all to leverage the soft power that they bestow on our country.

There is no one in government who could hold a candle to the UAE ambassador when it comes to understanding how we should use our assets. Not even the bloke in the black T-shirt who will be toast by Christmas.