The racing world -- or the majority of it, at least -- was surprised at the Godolphin decision to run Sakhee in Saturday's Breeders' Cup Classic instead of Fantastic Light. Projecting whether grass-loving European horses will handle our dirt surfaces is always a guessing game, but Fantastic Light seems from most handicapping angles to be better suited to dirt than his stablemate.

Even jockey Frankie Dettori, who rides both horses, seemed somewhat taken aback.

"We like to surprise people," said trainer Saeed Bin Suroor, who possibly was just as surprised himself, since he admitted the strategy was formulated by his bosses.

We can stop trying to make sense of the Godolphin choice, because it simply doesnt make sense. And here's the part we have difficulty comprehending: it isn't necessarily intended to.

The owners of Godolphin -- Sheikhs Mohammed, Maktoum and Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum -- breathe such rarified air that their decisions are often motivated by an agenda almost diametrically opposite that of others who race horses.

As the founders and rulers of tiny, oil-rich Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the Maktoums are among the worlds richest families. When they decided in the 1970s to play at the highest levels of racing, the "Dubai Brothers" spent hundreds of millions of dollars at Kentucky yearling auctions to purchase our best thoroughbreds. During those early years at the sales, their biggest rival was British gambling magnate Robert Sangster, with whom they regularly engaged in bidding wars. Sangster was no pauper himself (he had his own island), but the Maktoums kept their hands in the air with such determination that they virtually drove him from the horse business.

In fact, the success of the Maktoum family in raiding the U.S. of generations of its brightest equine stars is widely perceived as a primary reason the quality of racing in this country has visibly declined in the three decades since we watched superstars Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, Spectacular Bid and Forego.

Today the Maktoums have blue-blooded stables in Europe and America, and lavish farms on both continents. Under the banner of Godolphin, they are the world's most powerful racing and breeding operation. They even built a horse-racing mecca in their desert homeland -- including a lush grass course -- at which they host the $6 million Dubai World Cup, the world's richest race.

But their cravings are hardly satisfied. They are relentlessly and obsessively in pursuit of more challenges.

It is as if they understand that the rest of the world views them as privileged because of their wealth, and that the common perception is that anyone with a blank checkbook and a smidgen of common sense could spend seven-figure sums on racehorses and eventually come up with champions. So the Maktoums will occasionally combat such an image by purposely raising the bar to even the playing field with their less-fortunate competitors. Just as American millionaire Steve Fossett has become obsessed with becoming the first man to traverse the globe in a hot-air balloon, the sheiks seem to thrive on the challenge of not only winning major races, but succeeding in a fashion that is unprecedented, unorthodox and spectacular. And having conquered Europe, the Maktoums are increasingly shifting their focus to American racing, and specifically, winning the Kentucky Derby. But they want to win it their way.

At some point, the sheikhs could theoretically acquire their coveted Derby trophy by putting an obscene amount of money on the table on the eve of the Derby and purchasing an odds-on favorite. But what would be the sport in that? Instead, they have created their own series of Kentucky Derby prep races thousands of miles away in Dubai. In the face of criticism by derisively skeptical Americans who claim it can't possibly be done, they want to prove they are up to the quest.

Those critics of the Dubai-to-Louisville route are undoubtedly also convinced that Fantastic Light should be racing in the Classic, and Sakhee in the Turf. According to pedigree and workouts and running styles, that would make the most sense.

But that would also be the easy way.

"When we've achieved all we can achieve on turf, then we want to do something a little different," trainer Suroor noted.

In other words, the Maktoum brothers want to lift the bar a notch higher. If he wins, Sakhee would pull off the ultimate Daily Double: he would become the first horse ever to sweep the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in Paris the worlds most prestigious turf race - and the Breeders' Cup Classic.

Now that's a challenge.