Long Shots Wreak Mayhem on Punters By Sharan Kumar Punters expect favourites to win. Fair enough. It doesn’t happen all the time, nor should it. Racing is not a public service. But when proven form horses suddenly play truant, that’s when the punter begins to feel less unlucky and more cheated. If favourites were winning simply because they attracted money, the betting ring would double up as a mint. Sadly for gullible punters, horse racing does not recognise crowd funding as a performance-enhancing substance. The comforting belief that a heavily backed runner must automatically be the “best horse” keeps sending many straight to the wrong end of the stick, where optimism is abundant and returns are strictly optional. In an era bloated with lower-class races, where form is about as reliable as a weather forecast, upsets are no longer exceptions. They are standard issue. Yet every race day, the same ritual unfolds. Money pours in on reputations, yester...
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Baychimo Bursts the Bubble in 2000 Guineas By Sharan Kumar Sunday’s Mumbai card was a gentle reminder that favourites do not, in fact, come with a secret turbo button stitched under the saddle. The popular belief that a short-priced runner can simply “change gear” at will was left sprawled on the turf, as punters who chased reputations rather than realities paid a familiar price. Ten races promised a carnival. One favourite winning turned it into a wake. After the lone obliging early on, it was mayhem with a betting slip, as favourites discovered that pedigree, hype and celebrity jockeys do not automatically translate into forward motion when the bell rings. The day’s centrepiece, the Indian 2000 Guineas, was supposed to be at the mercy of Pune Derby hero Zacharias. Instead, it became a lesson in humility, with Baychimo gatecrashing the party. Despite a scrappy start and settling at the tail, Baychimo was unleashed wide in the straight, mowing them down with ...
Economics Joins Territories at Poonawallas Stud By Sharan Kumar Poonawalla Stud Farm has once more signalled its intent to sit at the very top of Indian Thoroughbred breeding with the arrival of Economics , the Group 1 winner of the Irish Champion Stakes , to stand alongside the outstanding sire Territories . At a time when racing is wrestling with uncertainty, the move injects ambition, confidence and global relevance into Indian bloodstock. A multiple-time Champion Stud Farm , the Poonawalla operation has long been a powerhouse nursery, producing quality racehorses and champions by the dozen. Scale, consistency and success have defined its record, but what truly sets it apart is the long-term vision driving its breeding programme. For Zavaray S. Poonawalla , breeding has never been a side pursuit. It is an abiding passion, backed by sustained investment in elite bloodstock and a clear determination to elevate the genetic base of India...
Crisis Exposes Racing’s Planning Paralysis By Sharan Kumar Indian racing is trudging through one of its most dismal phases, and the crisis has revealed an uncomfortable truth: the system is running on habit, not imagination. At a moment demanding bold national thinking, administrators have offered caution, confusion, and a painful lack of planning. The result is that the Indian classics, once the country’s proudest racing statements, now resemble local events wearing oversized titles. Only two major centres are active, yet even this limited window hasn’t stirred Mumbai into the leadership role it once embraced. Winter racing should feel like the season stretching its limbs after a long sleep, but instead it drifts in half-awake. Sunday’s Indian 1000 Guineas is an unmistakable example. Outstation contenders, already stabled in Mumbai, were belatedly told they could not run due to fears of glanders. The horses had been in place for days; th...
Kavya Rewrites Guineas Script with Stunning Win By Sharan Kumar Racing once again reminded everyone that reputation counts for little once the gates fly. The Gr 1 Indian 1000 Guineas, the first classic of the Mumbai season, held on Sunday, was expected to be a coronation for the accomplished Fynbos, instead saw the script turned firmly on its head. Against the run of logic, form and popular belief, M K Jadhav’s Kavya, ridden with icy assurance by David Allan, seized her moment and stunned the favourite, underlining yet again that classics are never won on paper. That truth played out vividly. Pesi Shroff’s Fynbos, armed with two classic wins and a reputation that arrived well ahead of her, towered over the opposition. With outstation challengers kept out due to the glanders scare in Bangalore, this was meant to be a coronation rather than a contest. The cake was baked, iced and ready to be sliced. Except racing, in its infinite...
Autocracy at the Helm Pushes BTC to the Brink By Sharan Kumar There has been a steady and disturbing stream of letters from senior functionaries of the Bangalore Turf Club , men with decades of experience on the Managing Committee, all pointing to the same uncomfortable truth: the Club is drifting into a governance crisis of its own making. These are not casual complaints or personal vendettas, but repeated red flags warning that unless corrective action is taken immediately, racing at Bangalore risks acquiring a reputation that may prove difficult, if not impossible, to reverse At the centre of this turmoil is Steward Uday Eswaran , whose conduct has increasingly come to symbolise the club’s slide from collective governance to personalised authority. His aggression towards officials and colleagues alike is no secret. He made no attempt to hide his intent when he declared that upon his re-election he would ensure the removal of Secretary Kiran , ...
Why BTC Needs a Regulatory Vet, Not Excuses By Sharan Kumar The glanders shutdown has laid bare a fatal governance gap at the Bangalore Turf Club. What should have been a tightly regulated biosecurity response degenerated into delay, discretion and internal confusion. At the centre of the mess is the absence of an independent Regulatory Veterinary Officer. This crisis is not a medical accident but an administrative failure, made worse by entrenched interests, a toxic work culture and resistance to oversight. Had a regulatory vet been in place, this situation would not have spiralled. Suspicion of a notifiable, zoonotic disease would have automatically triggered mandatory protocols. There would have been no scope for individual discretion, delayed judgment calls or internal debate masquerading as caution. Regulation would have trumped opinion. Instead, the system relied on a Chief Veterinary Officer who combined the rol...
Glanders Outbreak Exposes Deep Fault Lines By Sharan Kumar The NRCE’s confirmation of glanders in a Bangalore-based juvenile has forced a total shutdown of racing across the southern circuit, laying bare long-ignored weaknesses in veterinary oversight and biosecurity. With Bangalore, Mysore and Hyderabad all under suspension, the sport faces severe financial strain as owners, trainers and clubs absorb mounting costs without racing revenue. Repeat tests every 20 days will dictate the future, with even one new positive threatening an extended blackout. Glanders has not merely halted racing; it has exposed the soft underbelly of an industry that long believed outbreaks happened only in other stables, other districts, other states. The NRCE’s confirmation of glanders in the juvenile Jerom (Arod out of Paramour) has triggered the mandatory three-month shutdown, with repeat testing every 20 days and the grim caveat that even a single n...
Glanders Exposes Racing’s Weak Links By Sharan Kumar Racing is navigating one of its roughest patches in decades, and this crisis demands transparency, not half-truths. One positive at Mysore and five positives in Bangalore have triggered the alarm, with final confirmation from NRCE now awaited. Yet turf clubs must go beyond waiting for reports, they must openly trace the root cause of the outbreak and stop burying uncomfortable facts. Chennai is already shut due to government hostility, while Hyderabad , Bangalore and Mysore have frozen racing because of glanders. If NRCE confirms the findings, winter racing could collapse everywhere except Mumbai and Kolkata , where the clock is ticking ominously. Only full cooperation can contain the crisis, and to eliminate every shred of doubt, India should seek reconfirmation from a reputable lab in England before charting the sport’s next steps. According to information available, the trouble trail...
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A Decisive Mandate to Navigate Demanding Road Ahead By Sharan Kumar The verdict at the KSCA polls could not have been clearer. The members voted overwhelmingly for change, handing former India pacer Venkatesh Prasad and his “Game Changers” team a sweeping mandate that leaves no ambiguity about what the cricketing fraternity expects: renewal, transparency, and forward momentum. Prasad, who defeated K. N. Shanth Kumar by a margin of over 150 votes, now helms a Managing Committee composed almost entirely of his own slate, an unmistakable signal that the electorate wanted a clean, disruption-free runway for the new leadership. Former cricketers Sujith Somasundar and Avinash Vaidya take up key positions, while B. K. Ravi is the lone representative from the opposing camp to secure a slot, winning the post of Joint Secretary. In a telling political shift, long-time Brijesh Patel loyalist Santosh Menon had switched camps earlier and went ...
KSCA Polls: One Team Brings Experience; the Other Promises to Figure It Out Later By Sharan Kumar The elections to the Karnataka State Cricket Association are heating up, think of it as an IPL auction where one side knows what they’re doing and the other is still googling “how to build a team.” On one side, we have the Brijesh Patel–backed brigade, fielding K. N. Shanth Kumar for President, a man whose résumé doesn’t just speak; it practically waves its credentials. Shanth Kumar hails from a family that didn’t just promote sport, they carried it on their backs when sponsorship was harder to find than a Bangalore pitch offering bounce. His father K N Nettakallapa personally funded events when raising money for sport was equivalent to winning a Test in Hobart with one wicket in hand. Add to that the Deccan Herald's legacy of championing sport, and you know the pedigree is real, not manufactured for campaign time. And then ...