PARIS (AFP) — His Highness the Aga Khan may have one of the most revered thoroughbred racing and breeding operations now but when it was first bestowed on him 50 years ago he was terrified that he would bring it to an ignominious end.
The 74-year-old Swiss-born philanthropist and spiritual leader of the Ismaili branch of Shia Muslims makes his frank admission in a fascinating and beautifully illustrated book, written by Philip Jodidio, celebrating his half century in the business.
In 1957, the Aga Khan was chosen as successor by his grandfather who passed over his father Aly a war hero, playboy and vice-president of the United Nations, who was married twice including to Hollywood star Rita Hayworth.
He said that without any prior involvement with the racing business he felt like a duck out of water.
Having already assumed the role of Imam of the Ismailis in 1957 at a young age, the tragic death of his father in a car accident in 1960 saw him thrust into another new world - that of the thoroughbred industry, an empire assiduously built up by his grandfather and his father.
"The idea of entering into an activity that was in no way central to the Ismaili Imamat, an activity in which no member of my family - neither my brother nor my sister nor I - had any understanding, in itself raised a major question mark," he told the author in his typical humble and understated manner.
"Would I have the time, and the capacity, to learn something about an activity with which I was totally unfamiliar? When the leader of a family endeavour disappears, the next generation does not necessarily carry on.
"In this particular case, I was very much aware of the fact that this had been a family tradition for many generations and that it had been immensely successful at the time of my grandfather and father.
"To be the new young owner who would come in and cause the operation to collapse was not exactly what I wanted!"
The Aga Khan, who away from the rarefied atmosphere of racing has among other things helped finance the reconstruction of the historic Mostar bridge which was destroyed during the Balkan Wars in the 1990's, confesses that part of his wish to carry on was the strong bonds that had been created between his grandfather and father with the staff.
"The year that my father died, he was having remarkable success with the racing operation. As a young man who knew nothing, I found this success daunting.
"There were a large number of people who had devoted a great deal of time to this activity, people who had been very loyal to my father and my grandfather. My father only owned the operation for three years.
"He actually inherited most of the key people who had worked over a long period with my grandfather. There was a context of strong human relations and loyalty, and I was geuninely uncomfortable with not respecting that should I have decided not to continue.
"On the other hand, I imagined that these people might look to me in five years' time and say: 'How on earth did this happen: we ended in the hands of a twenty-three year-old who doesn't know which end of a horse kicks!" That was a most unpleasant thought," he said in his disarming trademark style.
However, it was his association with another French training legend Francois Mathet that turned his operation around, for having had to sell his best breeding stock to pay death duties when his father had died, he started to purchase new bloodlines which have been the fruit of his success.
He purchased down the years among others the breeding operations of textile king Marcel Boussac, who was famously slapped in the parade ring at Longchamp by a woman disgusted at his alleged collaboration during World War II, and successful businessman Jean-Luc Lagardere, when he died after complications involving a routine operation.
Despite breeding such great horses as wonder filly Zarkava, unbeaten in seven races and who in 2008 became the first filly to land the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe since Urban Sea in 1993, he will in the public's eye forever be best remembered for the ill-fated Shergar.
The mind-bogglingly easy winner of the 1981 Epsom Derby - so convincing that John Matthias the jockey of the second horse Glint of Gold actually believed he had won the race because he couldn't see the winner - was kidnapped by persons unknown from the Aga Khan's then flagship Irish stud Ballymany in February 1983.
Despite a nationwide search led by the unorthodox Chief Superintendent Jim Murphy no trace of the great horse was ever found, but despite this hugely embarrassing episode the Aga Khan maintained his racing and breeding operation there and bought the historic Gilltown Stud.
Indeed he is remarkably forgiving of what took place - a reflection of the common touch he possesses which quite often sees him wandering round Longchamp racecourse like any normal racegoer.
"That was a tragedy, but that was Ireland at the time."
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