Over the weekend, Chennai hosted the premier Invitation Cup races, which draw a gathering of the best-performing racehorses in the country competing at one centre annually in rotation. Having not been in a position to host the prestige event twice, Chennai took up the conduct this year after 11 years despite the death of the leading turf patron, M.A.M. Ramaswamy.
The signs at the end of two fine days of racing in Guindy, the country’s oldest racecourse, are that yet another centre has returned to national racing which will be open for all competitors. Horse-racing in the country has been through many trials and tribulations and continues to be in existence thanks to a significant Supreme Court ruling in the 1970s that it is a sport of skill.
Even so, gambling is never far away from the heart of the sport. But in this area, too, racing has lost out to cricket. The volumes of betting that racing used to attract around the country kept the sport alive long after the British packed up, leaving the key sporting legacies of horse-racing and cricket. Now that it is cricket which attracts all the betting in the country, despite such wagering being completely illegal, horse-racing faces very tough times ahead.
The return of the Madras Race Club is an important event for the revival of horse-racing as a sport in the country. Beyond its betting aspects, there is such a ring of nobility to the sport that patrons have always been willing to keep it alive. Having been allotted prime lands in the centre of the metropolises, racing faces several challenges now with governments invariably trying to shift courses out of the city centre. It is important to keeping the breeding of Indian thoroughbreds alive.
