Unstoppable!: Trainer Cooji Katrak had a quadruple on Sunday's Pune card. He (extreme left) is seen here leading in Hereafter (C Rajendra up) along with owner Haresh Mehta [Pic:rwitc.com]
The revival of a phenomenon called trainer Cooji Katrak continues to intrigue me.
The man has been maligned and slandered like no trainer in this country has been. He has faced suspensions and exile, had to live through ignominy--and all this in silence and solitude.
"I was framed," were the only three words he used to describe his past [check out this interview], and refused to talk further.
"I don't have the gift of the gab," he had also said in the same interview, "so I can never win an argument or convince anyone," before adding, "but I know how to train horses and get the best out of them. I would rather win races than arguments."
Sunday's quadruple at the Pune racetrack with Sea Treasure, Hereafter, Sea Ruler & Versaki not only advertised his consistency (unlike jockeys, trainers have rarely dominated both Mumbai & Pune seasons), but also made him darling of the racing crowd because all his four horses were well-supported favourites--and still delivered the goods, a trait which racing public nowadays values more than anything else.
And that brings me to the point I want to make. If someone had told me a couple of years back that the most popular trainer in western India is going to be Cooji Katrak, I would have laughed it off.
But then, as I said in the beginning, this revival of a phenomenon called trainer Cooji Katrak continues to intrigue me.
