The Aga Khan obituary: The spiritual leader and racehorse owner who competed at the Winter Olympics

Treated as a head of state, the Aga Khan was given the title of His Highness by the late Queen in July 1957, two weeks after his grandfather the Aga Khan III unexpectedly made him heir to the family’s 1,300-year dynasty as leader of the Ismaili Muslim sect.

Born December 13, 1936, His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV was the son of Prince Aly Khan and his first wife Princess Tajuddawlah Aga Khan, formerly Joan Yarde-Buller.

The Aga Khan spent his early years in Kenya, before attending the exclusive Institut Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland and moving on to Harvard, where he was studying in 1957.

His family had already enjoyed huge racing success, with his grandfather owning no less than five Derby winners in Blenheim (1930), Bahram (1935), Mahmoud (1936), My Love (1948) and Tulyar (1952), while the influence of his great mare Mumtaz Mahal is still prevalent in the Aga Khan’s bloodstock today.

The Aga Khan inherited those racing interests from his father following his death in a car accident in May, 1960, with star filly and dual Classic winner Petite Etoile among those passed to his ownership.

It was in the 1970s that the Aga Khan really reignited the equine connection, building a new stud in Normandy, the Haras de Bonneval, in 1973 before opening the Aiglemont complex in Chantilly five years later.

His bloodstock empire was built on homebreds, although he infused new blood along the way by acquiring the late Francois Dupre’s stock in 1977, and that of the late Marcel Boussac in 1978 and Jean-Luc Lagardere in 2005, reaping rich rewards with stallion Linamix among the last-named batch of purchases.

The addition of the new runners in the late 1970s precipitated a return to racing in England for the Aga Khan, who had campaigned his runners in France to that point, with Sir Michael Stoute and Fulke Johnston Houghton being handed some of his bluebloods.

The 1979 draft to Stoute contained arguably the most famous horse ever to sport the green and red silks in the shape of ill-fated Derby winner Shergar, a sensational Epsom victor by 10 lengths in 1981 and the first of five such winners.

The details of how Shergar’s tale unfolded are oft told: retired to the Aga Khan’s Gilltown Stud in Ireland at the end of a hugely successful three-year-old career, father to one crop of foals before his kidnap in 1983 by what is widely believed to have been the IRA, with his remains still undiscovered to this day.

There was further Epsom glory for Stoute and the Aga Khan in 1986, as Shahrastani held the seemingly irresistible charge of Dancing Brave.

But the Aga Khan’s love affair with British racing came to a crashing halt when his filly, Aliysa, was disqualified from the 1989 Oaks after testing positive for camphor, a prohibited substance.

Following a long battle with the Jockey Club, the Aga Khan – whose daughter Princess Zahra Aga Khan is also a successful owner – withdrew all his horses from Britain in response to what he felt were failings in the British testing system, with Stoute and Luca Cumani losing a good chunk of their strings as a result of the decision.

He finally ended his self-imposed boycott of British racing at Royal Ascot in 1995, before again sending horses to be trained by Cumani and Stoute, with future champion Kalanisi and Derby second Daliapour seemingly cementing a renewed relationship with Cumani, who had trained his 1988 Derby victor Kahyasi.

However, their association came to another abrupt halt in 2000 when two of the owner’s horses trained by Cumani returned positive tests, prompting him to remove 30 horses from the Newmarket-based Italian.

The Aga Khan’s sporting interests extended further than racing and he was a highly accomplished skier who represented Iran at the 1964 Winter Olympics, taking on the slalom, giant slalom and downhill events. He was also a long-term friend of Queen Elizabeth II, gifting her the filly Estimate, who went on to a famous success in the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot – a meeting where the pair would often watch together.

The Aga Khan is survived by three sons and his daughter.