Derby build up - IV

Primer for the First-Timer

If you have never attended the Derby before, never mind, there is always a first time.

Here is a small primer that should save you the blushes if another first timer asks help from you on Sunday at the Mahalaxmi racecourse.

• A Derby is a race that decides the champion horse. Every country has one--the English call theirs Epsom Derby, the Americans Kentucky Derby, and we call ours Indian Derby, or rather McDowell Signature Indian Derby because Vijay Mallya's UB Group has been sponsoring the race since 1985 in the name of their brand Signature.
  
• A horse can run in the Indian Derby only once, when he or she is a four-year-old. So all horses running in the Derby on Sunday were born in 2007, which makes them qualify in 2011 Derby.
• It is a dream of every horse owner and trainer and jockey and breeder to win the Indian Derby at least once in a lifetime.
• The Derby race distance is a mile and a half, or 2.4 km.
• Since the Mahalaxmi oval is precisely that long, the Derby horses will be loaded into the starting gates close to the winning post which they will cross twice--once immediately on jump, and later to decide the result.
• The Mahalaxmi racecourse you see today was styled on the Melbourne racecourse in Australia and built more than 100 years ago. Sir C N Wadia, founder of Bombay Dyeing, was chiefly instrumental in its creation.
• The Derby winner--whosoever he or she will be--will take about only two-and-a-half minutes to cover the mile-and-a-half trip, so in a way, except for the winner, four years of arduous training and preparation will be undone in mere 150 seconds!
• Only thoroughbreds are allowed to race, and they are the ones whose ancestry can be traced back (meticulous records are preserved by the authorities) to more than 300 years to only three Arabian stallions who were mated with a few Irish mares.
• Every horse owner has his unique racing colours. They consist various colours and designs for a jockey’s shirt, sleeves and cap. They are called ‘silks’.
• If an owner has many horses in the same race, all their jockeys wear the same colours in shirt, but different coloured caps to help identification.
• The race caller, who gives live commentary of the races, identifies horses by the colours of jockey’s silks.
• Dr MAM Ramaswamy, the biggest horse owner in the history of Indian Turf, had to wait for nearly two decades to win the Indian Derby in his own silks. Amazing Bay finally won it for him in 1996. He now also holds the record for maximum Derbies (8) by an owner.
• Trainer Rashid Byramji has the most impressive record for the Derby as a trainer. He has won the race 11 times which includes two hat-tricks and once four-in-a-row.
• As jockey, Pesi Shroff holds the record for eight Derby victories. As trainer, he won his first Derby last year with Jacqueline. Shroff has five runners in Sunday's Derby: Xisca, Macchupicchu, Berlusconi, Batista & Camacho.
• Pesi Shroff also is the only jockey to score a hat-trick with Exhilaration (1989), Desert Warrior (1990) & Starfire Girl (1991).
• Dr Vijay Mallya’s Supervite (1999) was the only Derby winner who was upgraded as winner in the record books after real winner Saddle Up (also owned by Dr Mallya) was disqualified for testing positive for a banned substance.

• The races are timed by an electronic timer operated by an electronic beam so that the timing of a race is accurate to the hundredth of a second, and devoid of human error.

• The photo finish camera can differentiate between two horses finishing hundredth of a second apart.

• The only time photo finish camera failed during the Derby was in 1963, when the judge declared Rocklie as winner and Mount Everest as runner up based on his naked-eye judgement.
• Astonish, bred at the Poonawalla Stud Farms, was the first Indian Derby winner to have won abroad. In 1994, he won the Red Room Handicap at Sha Tin racetrack in Hong Kong.

Did you know?

• The shortest race distance in India is 1,000 metres or 5 furlongs; the longest is 3,200 metres or 2 miles.
• A horse’s colour is decided not by its skin, but by the colour of its hair.
• A normal, racing-fit thoroughbred weights around 900-1,230 lbs or about 400-550 kg.
• Horses have a peculiar running style, based on which they are classified as sprinters (1,000-1400m), routers (1,600-1,800m) or stayers (2,000-3,000m).

(c) MiD DAY