If you are new to racing, never been to the Mahalaxmi racecourse, but are still planning to show up there this Sunday (February 7) to witness the greatest race of 2010, the grade 1 McDowell Signature Indian Derby, you need to put on two essential things: your best Sunday dress & an air of being a Derby wizard.
This small guide, full of useful points to remember, will help you with the latter.
- The first thing you must know is that the Indian Derby is a race that is run over a mile-and-a-half (approx 2.4 kilometers), and a horse can run the Derby only once in its lifetime, and that's when it is a four year old. So you will only find horses born in 2006--of course not all, only the best of them--lining up for the Derby race.
- Did you know that irrespective of the actual date of birth, all horses turn a year older on January 1 of the following year? For example, two horses born almost one year apart (say on January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009) are both 'considered' to be 'one-year-old' on January 1, 2010, although in reality, the latter is only a one-day-old baby.
- There are instances, although very rare, of horses being born in December. Christmas Eve, so named because she was born on December 24, owned by the Goculdas family of Mumbai was one such horse. Incidentally, Royal Tern, owned by the same family, won the Indian Derby in 1979.
- Interestingly, Royal Tern was ridden to Derby victory by a young riding sensation, Karl Umrigar, who later met with an unfortunate accident on the track that turned out to be fatal. But who knew at the time that Karl’s future brother-in-law, Pesi Shroff, would arrive on the Indian riding horizon to shatter all Derby records?
- Pesi Shroff who as a jockey, won his first Indian Derby astride Enterprising in 1984, won seven more Indian Derbies before he hung up his boots four years ago to become a horse trainer. As a trainer too, the living legend of a horseman has cast a long shadow on Sunday's Derby as three of the main contenders for the top spot--Jacqueline, Onassis & Bruckner--are trained by him, and the first-named is widely expected to give him his first Derby victory as a trainer.
- Incidentally, Pesi Shroff is also the only jockey to have scored a hat-trick in the Indian Derby, winning with Exhilaration (1989), Desert Warrior (1990) and Starfire Girl (1991).
- To only owner to have led in three Derby winners in successive years was Ranjit Bhat who won with Commanche, Squanderor & Manitou between 1976-78. This year, there could be another if Onassis wins, as Farouq Rattonsey, who partly owns the horse, has also led in Hotstepper (2009) & Antonios (2009).
- All three winners of Ranjit Bhat were trained by Rashid Byramji, the greatest living legend of Indian horse racing, who holds the incredible record of having won the most coveted race 11 times, which includes two hat-tricks and a four-in-a-row.
- Trainer Rashid Byramji also has the distinction of having trained the only Derby winner owned by a Bollywood film star; he trained Prince Khartoum, owned by Sanjay Khan (father-in-law of Rhitik Roshan), winner of the 1972 Indian Derby.
- The stakes money for the first Indian Derby run in 1943 was Rs 35,000; the 68th running this Sunday will see a new record in stakes when Rs 2 crore will be up for grabs.
Check your horse sense
The colourful shirts jockeys wear are called 'the silks' in racing language. If a horse owner has more than one horse in a race, all his horses will carry the same silks, only with different colour caps so that the race commentator can identify them correctly.
The minimum distance of a horse race is 1 km, the longest is 3.2 km.
A horse's colour is decided not by his skin, but by the colour of his hair.
A horse is called either colt (male) or filly (female) up to the age of 4 years; later a colt (or gelding, as it is called if castrated) becomes a 'horse' and a filly becomes a 'mare'.
1943 35,000
1953 47,510
1963 65,104
1973 138,300
1983 394,278
1993 1,149,420
2003 4,265,961
2010 20,000,000
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