President Obama has arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for the first part of his Middle East visit. Coffee with King Abdullah was part of a ceremony in which the King presented a gold medal to President Obama. Luckily, the President's dislike of coffee didn't interrupt the festivities.The President will accompany King Abdullah to Al Janadriyah Stud Farm later today, which is the King's 2,000 acre horse breeding operation (complete with palace) outside of Riyadh. The President will spend the night there.
King Abdullah is the largest patron of horse racing and breeding in Saudi Arabia; read more on all that here. Until last October, HRH was the owner of one of the winningest American race horses in US history; the Kentucky-born Alysheba (in pic). Alysheba won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in 1987 among many other A-level races, and was Horse of The Year in 1988; he's listed as one of the top 100 US racehorses of the 20th century. King Abdullah purchsed Alysheba in 2000 to improve his own blood stock, and in October of 2008, gifted him back to the United States, after he'd spent almost almost a decade at Al Janadriyah. Sadly, the legendary stallion was euthanized after a fall in his stall, in March at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky.
