B R Sharan Kumar

  Margaretta Springs the Multi Million Surprise   By Sharan Kumar   The Poonawalla Breeders’ Multi Million is not so much a horse race as it is an annual ambush. Form students arrive armed with statistics, sectional timings, stable whispers and moral certainty. They leave clutching torn tickets and philosophical debates about destiny, probability and why they ever trusted “good things.”   Much against market expectations and the confident murmur of turf talk, rank outsider Margaretta from the yard of Pesi Shroff upended every neat calculation to emerge an easy winner on Sunday. The betting boards had not exactly rolled out a red carpet for her. Yet when the moment arrived, she treated the opposition with brisk efficiency and the crowd with a lesson in humility.   Seasoned racegoers stood momentarily shell shocked, their expressions hovering between disbelief and reluctant admiration. First timers, blissfully unburdened by pre race theories, simpl...

  PBMM at 37: Fortune and Fashion Steals the Frame   By Sharan Kumar   As the Poonawalla Breeders’ Multi-Million turns 37, it remains juvenile racing’s most glamorous proving ground. Conceived when first-season runners had few riches to chase, the race still rewards precocity and pure speed over seven furlongs. Not every winner becomes a Classic star, but that was never the brief. This is a specialist’s contest, where brilliance blooms early and logic occasionally takes a holiday.   The 37th edition of the Poonawalla Breeders’ Multi-Million is upon us, and once again the nation’s most precocious three-year-olds are being asked a simpler, sterner question: “How fast can you run right now?” In this race, pedigree is a promise. Reputation is decoration. What matters is present tense speed.   When this race was conceived, there were hardly any meaningful stake races for first-season runners. It arrived like a brightly wrapped cheque at a time when ju...

  Racing Is Worthwhile When Form Speaks, Trust Holds   By  Sharan Kumar   Horse racing, at its best, is organised uncertainty. Speed meets preparation, pedigree meets patience, and judgment meets risk. The punter steps in not merely as a gambler, but as an interpreter. He studies form, tracks patterns, reads intent, weighs distance, going, draw, stable signals, and jockey choices. When results broadly respect those clues, racing feels intelligent and fair. When they repeatedly ignore them, despair settles quietly, like dust on unused binoculars.   Racing is not meant to be predictable. A sport where favourites always win would quickly grow sterile. But racing is meant to be readable. There is a vital difference between uncertainty and opacity. One invites analysis. The other punishes it. The charm of racing lives in that narrow corridor where surprise is allowed, but logic is still visible.   The real appeal of the sport lies in progression ...

  When Every Stand Has a Name, No Name Stands Out   By Sharan Kumar   Somewhere between gratitude and overenthusiasm lies a sensible naming policy. When too many names are stamped across every gate, stand, corner and corridor, memory does not deepen, it diffuses. Honour works like perfume, not paint. A few notes linger for decades, a whole bucket only overwhelms the room. By naming almost everything after someone, the Karnataka Cricket Association risks ensuring that, over time, fewer names are actually remembered. In their enthusiasm, the present office bearers may actually be diluting the very recall they hope to preserve. Sporting memory is notoriously short. Today’s crowd cheers the current star, tomorrow’s headlines belong to the next one, and even recently retired cricketers are quickly pushed into the background by fresh heroes and new scorecards.   The attempt to please has now reached peak ceremonial choreography. Players who already have stands ...

  BTC Braces for Costly Relocation Ahead   By Sharan Kumar   The proposed shift of racing activities from the historic Bangalore Turf Club premises to the Kunigal Stud Farm marks more than a change of venue. It signals a financial and structural crossroads that could determine whether organized racing in the region reinvents itself or slowly runs out of track.   According to the government decision, BTC is to move its racing operations to the Kunigal Stud Farm, with a two-year deadline to vacate the present High Grounds property. The existing city venue is to be converted into a lung space, while the club is to be granted four acres at the current location to continue limited institutional activity, along with 110 acres at Kunigal on a long lease. The lease rent is pegged at 2.5 percent of the guidance value of the land at Kunigal.   On paper, that sounds like accommodation. In arithmetic, it looks punishing.   If the guidance value of t...

  Why Newsrooms Forget Their Own A recent article by celebrated journalist Vishveshwara Bhat highlighting how journalists are often denied meaningful acknowledgment in the very papers they serve has sparked overdue introspection. The issue is not sentiment but institutional memory. Reporters and editors who document the lives of others frequently exit without a proper record of their own contribution. In an industry built on remembrance and public record, the quiet passing of its practitioners raises an uncomfortable but necessary question about newsroom values.   By Sharan Kumar   The newsroom is a strange battlefield. Names are built there, reputations forged, governments rattled, scams exposed, heroes made and unmade. Yet when one of its own falls, the silence can be louder than any headline. Inspired by a deeply reflective piece by Vishweshwar Bhat, this article examines an uncomfortable truth of modern journalism: the journalist who chronicled history often...