For those grumbling that Hyderabad racing had become a dreary parade of favourites obliging at miserly odds, Monday was the universe’s way of saying: Careful what you wish for. The charm of unpredictability returned with a vengeance, and by sundown, it was the bookmakers—smiling like cats who had raided the cream pot, who were left richer, while punters trudged out looking as if someone had pickpocketed both their wallets and their optimism.

The day began deceptively normal. The opener, the Red Rum Plate, a race for maiden three-year-olds, went by the script—Certainty justified her name, brushing aside Tootsie Darling and Lake Michigan as though she’d read the form book herself. Certainty led from the start, with Tootsie Darling giving vain chase, while Lake Michigan put up a late flourish to grab third.

Punters were lulled into that dangerous state of mind: confidence. They should have known better. Racing luck has the shelf life of a ripe banana.

What followed was pure mayhem. Trainers Satheesh and Ravinder Singh gleefully played villains in the drama. Kingston, winless for 900 days and a veteran of freefalls through the handicap ratings, suddenly remembered how to run in the Independence Cup (Div I). Poor Romantic Grey, the subject of considerable betting, looked home and dry before Kingston swooped in late. Punters were left gasping, while NRI Dheera added comic relief by drifting to the edge of the grass track yet still stumbling into third. In the lower division, She Can—539 days in the wilderness—decided she could indeed, blasting through the rails while hot favourite Warwick fiddled about, waiting for the “perfect” run that never came. She Can had also dropped in class, shifted stables, and ended up giving jockey Shamaz Shareef a rare winner.

Then came Ravinder Singh’s Glimmer of Hope. Fitting name, since that’s all punters had left. Apprentice Kuldeep Singh produced a last-stride heist in the Karimnagar Plate, mugging favourite Lego on the line. Somewhere in the betting ring, wallets audibly groaned.

The feature, the Ascot Plate, a terms race for three-years-old and over, saw D Minchu—missing from the winner’s enclosure for over a year—deliver the knockout punch. The market had already marked Berrettini as a non-starter in spirit, so punters latched onto Espionage at even money. He skipped away and looked the winner, until, in true punters’ nightmare fashion, he hit the invisible wall inside the last 100 metres. Enter D Minchu, flying like he had a grudge against the clock, storming past to win by daylight. Calista Girl and Calistoga filled up the frame, while Berrettini lived up to the drift, finishing as though he had entered the wrong race.

Meanwhile, Akshay Kumar continues his cold streak. Once a treble machine, now struggling to find even a single, he endured another bruising day. Dontblockmyway had market confidence in the Devarakonda Cup (Div I), but Only The Brave nicked it under apprentice Ajay Kumar, leaving the favourite trapped in second. The lower division went to Donald Netto-trained Her Ladyship, a rank outsider who turned the race into a private procession, while Zuza, the half-money favourite, stayed frozen in third.

At least the Fair Haven Plate, a race for horses rated 40 to 65, offered something resembling normalcy. Brilliant Lad and Walking Thunder turned it into a head-to-head duel, with Yash Narredu’s mount snatching it in the nick of time. A minor relief for punters, though by then most had already resigned themselves to the fact that “fancied runner obliging” was off the day’s script.

In short, punters who had been happily fattening their wallets over the past week learned an eternal racing truth: fortune doesn’t just turn, it pirouettes with cruel elegance. Bookmakers, on the other hand, probably slept better last night than those who had backed “Certainty,” only to discover that the rest of the card was anything but.