The Dubai World Cup, a thoroughbred horse race held annually since 1996 at the Meydan Racecourse in Dubai, has long been the world’s richest horse race. Accordingly, it has become one of the integral fixtures in the thoroughbred horse racing calendar and one of the campaign’s undoubted highlights.

The race was created by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the man behind the Darley Stud and Godolphin Racing, one of the world's leading thoroughbred breeding and racing operations.

While the Grand National remains a British obsession, the canny predictor in the UK looking for success with their bets would do well to take a look across the channel when looking to profit from attractive odds.

The Kentucky Derby is a Grade One stakes race for three-year-old thoroughbreds, held annually in Louisville on the first Saturday in May. It regularly brings the sporting world to a halt as punters across the globe focus on one of the highlights of the horse racing season.

Louisville’s closing fixtures cap the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. The big race itself is a furious gallop over one and a quarter miles at Churchill Downs where thoroughbred colts and geldings carry 126 pounds (57.2 kg), while fillies carry five pounds fewer.

It is Scottish horse racing's grand day out. The Scottish Grand National is run every April at the superb Ayr racecourse in the west of Scotland and attracts leading trainers and jockeys from across the UK and Ireland for one of the highlights of the racing calendar.

It is Scotland's equivalent of the Aintree meeting, staged with great aplomb during Ayr's two-day Scottish Grand National Festival meeting.