Another coat of lime? Time to brush up India’s racing edifice. The Derby was a fine spectacle but a depressingly small crowd was there to focus on the action

Before heading off to Mumbai I put “Indian Derby” in the Google search engine and it came up with “Ten Best Indian Restaurants in Derby”. Now Derby is a colourful town in the UK Midlands with an exuberant Indian community – and a resonant name of course – but surely Google could have come up with something more relevant to the information I was seeking?

‘Education’ in Indian racing is a never-ending process – as I am reminded by my long list of Indian friends and associates. So what follows some may find no more than the reflections of an observer trying to advertise his knowledge rather than the confidence of drawing on it.

There was a far bigger crowd (if not a more committed one) than the eleven thousand at Mahalaxmi racecourse on the first Sunday in February, just along Marine Drive at packed Wankhede Stadium for the India/England T20. That was a ‘slaughter’. Hundreds of miles to the north for the Kumbh Mela Festival at the sacred confluence of the Ganges and Yumuna rivers, and of the mystical Saraswati, there were unfortunately actual deaths from a human tsunami.

I’m told that there were as many as four crores of Hindu pilgrims at the Mela. A sardonic Indian friend commented that the three almost concurrent events “Did not necessarily attract the same kind of worshippers”.

They were surely as ardent –just as in Britain you could say the same about cricket at Lords; racing at Royal Ascot; and pop music at the Glastonbury Festival. Well you might.

Racing was first held in Madras three years before the first Epsom Derby in 1780. Yet if the decline in the Epsom attendance – 250,000 to 25,000 last year - is taken as a yardstick of British racing, surely the reduction of over a hundred racecourses in India in British times, to the current eight – mostly under threat of developers – puts us both in the same leaky boat.

When we doodled the line of Partition we left the country’s leading stud, Renala, on the ‘wrong side’ – in Pakistan. There were then many important Indian owners associated with the British racing scene: without wishing to seduce/kidnap them again – India’s need for ‘fresh blood’ is as great as ours – we would welcome them back. I was privileged to take lunch with this year’s HPSL Indian Derby winning owner Mr Kishore Dhingra, still exultant the day after his momentous victory – and he expressed an interest in British racing. As a representative of Highclere Thoroughbred Racing who managed 2005 Epsom Derby hero Motivator, I had a similar privilege to celebrate with the owners the day after his victory. It is an experience so few will ever enjoy: now I’ve had two bites of the cherry, so to speak.

Substantial players in India prefer to be big fish in what to the world is the remote, unsung pond of Indian racing, rather than explore foreign fields – and the pity is that the umbilical cord with the nation that brought racing to India has all but been severed. The days of the Maharajah of Rajpipla and his Derby winner Windsor Lad are going on for a century old.

Cross-fertilization – and by that I mean reciprocal foreign ownership – could only benefit all parties. I have it on written authority from the RCTC that five top Indian races are open to foreign competition; the offer is not taken up. Quarantine restrictions – working both ways – have a strangle hold. As has inertia. If five foreign jockeys can ride in the Indian Derby, why not foreign horses? Then again despite British racing being propped up (just like our National Health Service) by Indian staff they get scant recognition at our myopic annual Stud & Stable Staff Awards. And though people are working on it few Indian jockeys have been asked over for renewals of the Shergar Cup International Jockeys Challenge at Ascot in late summer.

You could say Indians themselves have been parochial – that they’d rather win domestic classics. Before the quarantine barricade was set up - to make the Berlin Wall look a mere stepping stone - Indian visitors to the UK included foremost 2016 Indian Derby winner Desert God. He didn’t acclimatize and was humbled in handicaps at lesser British tracks. Southern Regent the 2005 Derby winner won a hurdle at Market Rasen for Alan King and a Southwell flat race for John Quinn, inadequate reflections of that horse’s true ability. The intent was noble; the fact was both horses were not in their prime. It’s undoubtedly a hard call. Foreign jockeys (no names, no retribution) I’ve spoken to regard the best Indian horses as Group 3.

Foreign breeding bloodstock? Ah that’s a different story. We’ll come later to this year’s worthy Derby winner Ranquelino – by a Japanese stallion out of a USA bred mare, bred at the historic Manjri Stud near Pune. Imported bloodstock is the bedrock of the Indian breeding industry. Had Psychic Star, Multitude’s daughter out of a China Visit mare, prevailed, she would have been the first India-bred to win the countries own Derby since Prince Pradeep.

It would be a severe understatement to say the Indian Derby is a unique occasion. When it was sponsored by United Breweries the ‘boss man’, Vijay Mallya currently exiled in London, commanded the winner’s dais surrounded by bodyguards toting sub-machine guns. Foreign jockeys habitually cleaned up on their winter sojourns - and were better riders for it – they’ve told me there’s no quarter given by their Indian counterparts.

This year five riders, from the UK, France and Ireland failed to make an impact. Until Covid times much of the field for the Indian Derby, first run in 1943, was entrusted (perhaps a word to withhold given the skulduggery allegedly prevalent) to Brits and Aussies. The first was won by a Britt, the Australian jockey, Edgar Britt. Between 2007-13 all the Derbies went to foreign riders, Mick Kinane, Martin Dwyer, Jimmy Fortune, Sylvester de Sousa and Richard Hughes. Piggott and Dettori were less successful.

This year it was like old times – “Seasoned saddle artists” the Times of India called the five imports: that phrase replaced the archaic one which tickled English audiences - “knights of the pigskin”. They were: Oisin Murphy back riding Santissimo, the favourite, on which he had won the Indian Two Thousand; David Allan all-time leading foreign jockey in India; top class Christophe Lemaire and Tom Marquand, and the quintet completed by accomplished Billy Lee from Ireland.

The time of the Derby was, I’m assured, good but with the next quintet home behind the 5-1 winner all at no-hoper odds, some might question the quality of this year’s race. The time of 2m 28 seconds for the 2400 metres was respectable for any race of this trip. Ranquelino I’d been told was the most impressive of the regional Derby winners. But that win in Bangalore had come just six days previously and had a horse in Britain been asked to travel the equivalent of his punishing road journey from Bangalore to Mumbai, questions would have been asked about his welfare. He was a bit skittish in the parade ring but responded every time he was asked in the race.

I was also informed (I was recipient of any amount of pre-race information, ignoring which saved me a lot of rupees) that Ranquelino is the first really good horse sired by Manjri Stud’s Deep Impact stallion Fiero. I’m reminded that Oath stood in Japan before being acquired by that marvellous man the Maharaj of Pratap. Oath didn’t shine overly at stud in dusty Gujarat. Sunset, American bred dam of Ranquelino, has had just one other produce to race.

Major Nargolkar, formerly Stud Registrar who along with his successor Satish Iyer has put the Indian Stud Book firmly on the international map, was good enough to inform me that seven previous Indian Derby winners have won within a week of their previous outing. I’ve always found facts and statistics are staple for those immersing themselves in the Indian turf. (Immersion in the holy waters of the Ganges is of a different order).

Richard Hughes remembers that when he won the millennium Indian Derby on Smart Chieftain that it was ten years before another favourite won – his mount the immortal Indian Triple Crown winner Jacqueline.

Hughes, his training career on the rise, is in the process of repaying his constant Indian benefactors Khushroo Dhunjiboy and Vijay Shirke. “I owe them a lot,” Richard told me, wishing he could be in Mumbai for a race where he was often first port of call for punters. “My Indian owners have supported me with horses since I started training. The Indian Derby has the atmosphere of all the great races. It’s breathless, the atmosphere so intense – on the verge of explosive. The crowd are as engaged as anywhere in the world.”

We didn’t have Frankie Dettori this time but we had the ‘Frankie flying dismount’ from Sandesh. And it was obvious to this observer what a good jockey he is – and not just because he ‘cleaned up’ over the Derby weekend. With big race under his command he was content to ride out Ranquelino hands and heels. Hopefully we will see Sandesh or one or other of India’s leading jockeys on Shergar Cup day. I shall pester the Ascot management!

If I had a concern it was that the racing appears to have become a vehicle for gambling as opposed to ‘improvement of the breed’. The latter was the motto of the British Jockey Club. But the Jockey Club, for all its shortcomings – it saw the future in aspic and exhibited its lack of managerial expertise when members were drawn from the aristocracy, from Lords, Ladies and gentlemen rather than ‘professionals’ – had racing at its heart. Things had to change in tune with public swings – towards football, cricket, online betting – but racing simply hasn’t kept pace in the public perception. Not just in India and Great Britain are we in an existential fight for survival. A new coat of whitewash on Mahalaxmi’s somewhat dilapidated stands will not cover up deep lying problems.

I was probably spoilt by the Derby won by Jacqueline who was such a charismatic star and deservedly mated with the greatest of them all, Galileo on the pre-eminent stud in the world, Coolmore. She duly produced good winners.

And spoilt too by the racing personalities who have been so generous, not least in forgiving my ignorance. I shouldn’t name any because the order they come in may be noted yet would bear no relation to the equal esteem in which I hold them. Indeed all Indian racing is special to me since I started my ‘education’ here when researching at the Stud Book in Pune where there was an extensive library – untouched for decades.

Then there’s been the hospitality and patience of trainers, jockeys, owners, officials, in fact anyone engaged in racing. My always too brief stay at the Royal Western India Turf Club, across the road from the Stud Book, adjacent the home turn of the racecourse is as near to heaven on earth for any racing buff. English breakfast on the verandah, the kites wheeling on soft eddies over the infield, joggers on the ground emerging from the early morning mists – sublime.

India’s racing’s resilience is being tested; its supporters must accept the situation is not unique. Everywhere in the world instant gratification in all walks of life, certainly in sport, the norm is driven by gambling. The rhythms of racing, sometimes years before bearing fruit, do not conform to the predilections of, or excite, younger generations that much. On my early visits to Mahalaxmi the backdrop was cotton factory chimneys rising above the trees in the back straight; the cross on St Stephens Church was similarly sited in Poona; the monumental Victoria Memorial in Calcutta steals the scene overlooking the Hastings racecourse. But all are nearer and nearer to becoming future ‘Happy Valleys’. Yet I dare say property and land are more valuable on Malabar Hill than that engulfing Hong Kong’s claustrophobic racetrack.

India’s major racecourses are indeed relics of British times yet the grandstands themselves, unlike so many in the UK, were built to last, heritage sites which like so much of India have stood the test of time. But to repeat India’s ageing racing infrastructure, a crumbling edifice, is sorely in need of restoration.

There was a time when India had a legitimate claim to membership of the international scene. The Major, an accomplished turf historian, told me the story of Short Hand sire of the first Indian Derby winner. His full-sister Cosquilla raced successfully in France where she was covered by Prince Rose. She was "smuggled" to Ireland in a fishing trawler, foaled a bay colt and from there German U-Boats notwithstanding, shipped on to America. Her colt was claimed at Saratoga for $2,500: he was Princequillo, twice champion sire most notably of Round Table, maternal grandsire of Secretariat".

The line of Indian racing is drawn in the sand, largely unsung and overtaken by the pecuniary interests of the international sport. The lesson for us all – money alone is never the saviour. There is a rather be whiskered epigram says that when we departed the Empire, through Bombay’s seafront arch of the Gateway to India, that there were Indians who didn’t who didn’t know we’d left – and many who didn’t know we’d been!

Why delude ourselves that racing is here in perpetuity?