About 18 or 19 contenders are expected to line up this Sunday for Indian racing’s showpiece event -- The 81st Indian Derby. It will be the first time since the UB Group partnered us since the 80’s, that the race will be bereft of a sponsor’s prefix thanks to the withdrawal of RWITC’s newest find for this crown jewel.
Shiven Surendranath, the marketing head of the RWITC, told me the sponsor has requested the agreement be started from next year, after getting a “better grip on guidelines around surrogate advertising.”
The Indian Derby is to Mumbai what the Melbourne Cup is to Australia. We had signed a near Rs 30 crore five-year agreement with USL in 2011, which was deemed staggering at the time. The prize money continued to scale record highs, touching a jaw-dropping Rs 3.6 crore when Desert God won in 2016.
This year’s total guaranteed stakes of Rs 2 crore will be largely funded by the RWITC, and the value of Vijay Mallya’s personal drive to keep upping the ante and making D-Day the benchmark for how a race of this magnitude ought to be promoted can be appreciated.
However, nothing can take away from the prestige and heritage of the race and it should still draw an attendance of upwards of 18,000 as for many the Derby is the one time to make their annual pilgrimage to Mahalaxmi. The RWITC will offer a very popular flea market, and races after 6pm under lights, though the decision to charge Rs 1,000 for guests has to be questioned, when the need of the hour was to bring the crowds back in huge numbers to get back the “feel good” atmosphere.
Pesi Shroff is attempting a hat-trick, having won it in 2021 and 2022, with the top two in the race -- King’s Ransom and Supernatural. The connections of Ahead Of My Time, the 2000 Guineas winner, took the courageous but surprising decision to give the Derby a miss, perhaps doubting he will stay the mile and a half.
Jockey Suraj Narredu, who has won this thrice in the last four years, is the cornerstone of the Narredu family representation in the race with brothers Satish and Malesh having runners and Suraj being joined by cousin Yash in the saddle - probably a record for one family in the same Derby!
After the Lollapalooza concert on the Turf last weekend, it is hoped a packed audience will dance to the music of hoofbeats this Sunday at one of our city’s most loved crowd pullers!
(Vivek Jain is former chairman of RWITC. Views are personal)
