How Manchester United’s history was shaped by the Rock of Gibraltar

You wouldn’t have realized it when he was barreling down the finish line or living out his retirement busy with 16 Group One winners, but Rock of Gibraltar was a horse that changed the course of football history.

The Irish stallion, who died this week at Coolmore Stud in County Tipperary aged 23, was at the center of a legal dispute which allowed Malcolm Glazer to secretly acquire ownership of Manchester United. Which means if Rock wasn’t such a good horse, if he wasn’t so extremely valuable, little blood, Old Trafford’s roof wouldn’t be leaking, there wouldn’t be a £600m debt still hanging over the club and FC United. Manchester would never have been created.

Rock was a foal in a good year for United: 1999. And it quickly became clear that he had real potential as a runner. Along with his Coolmore partner JP McManus, its owner John Magnier became close to United manager Alex Ferguson and even took his advice to invest in the club, then plc. Racing was Ferguson’s main form of relaxation and he became increasingly interested in owning horses.

Magnier, appreciating the public relations value of working with the United manager, saw an opportunity and invited him to join the Rock; the horse was registered as co-owned by Ferguson and Magnier’s wife Sue. And almost as soon as Rock started racing, Ferguson picked up some rich horse silverware, glowing with excitement as the horse, his jockey dressed in United livery, won seven consecutive Group One races, beating Mill Reef, which was a long-standing record.

The 2000 Guineas, the St James Palace Stakes and the Sussex Stakes all came together in a glorious burst over the summer of 2002. This was a real horse. No wonder Ferguson was beaming with excitement. But almost from the moment Rock was retired, his smile disappeared. It has been estimated that with a record like the Rock’s, he could earn more than £200 million in fees for his owners. Ferguson liked the sound of that.

The problem was that Magnier and McManus were too shrewd to split the rewards. Ferguson, they explained, was a co-owner only for the racing portion of Rock’s career, entitled to a share of the prize money. Stud was very different. An enraged Ferguson took legal action in 2003. The response was unequivocal: “Coolmore Stud and John Magnier believe the lawsuit is without merit and will vigorously defend it,” was the extent of their public comment. And lively was an understatement.

Using their shared Cubic Expression vehicle, Magnier and McManus quickly increased their stake in United to 28.7 percent. This was done to make a point: when it comes to showing relative strength, they were building enough of a stake here to become Ferguson’s boss. In 2004, they flexed their muscle by issuing a list of 99 questions about the way United was run before the annual board meeting. It was getting ugly. Roy Keane was so ugly that on the journey back to Ireland he was cut short and told to inform his manager of the seriousness of the position he had accepted.

Keane tried to dissuade Ferguson from making such powerful enemies as the Coolmore group. But the boss could not be moved. In the end, however, an agreement was reached. Ferguson settled for a one-off payment believed to be around £2.5m, well short of the amount the horse earned when he sired an astonishing 77 Group winners, including Samitar, Seventh Rock, Mount Nelson and Society Rock.

Meanwhile, Malcolm Glazer has been secretly accumulating United shares in a bid to take over the club. In May 2005, there was only one block standing in his way of getting enough of a stake to trigger a takeover: the stock Cubic Expression had earned. With the dispute settled, no longer needing influence over Ferguson and without any emotional attachment to the club, Magnier and McManus were happy to accept Glazer’s offer of £3 a share. And why not; it represented a huge profit, tens of millions earned in just a few years.

So Glazer took control of United, and in the process set up an ownership model in which they took out massive loans into a debt-free operation while he sat back and counted the dividends. Whether it would have been able to build a sufficient share without the Irish block remains anyone’s guess. But the Rock of Gibraltar certainly made it easier for him to clear his possessions. Sure, the horse may have remained gloriously ignorant of his guilt, but there will be plenty of Manchester United fans with reason not to mourn his death.