B’luru’s long history of backing the right horse

This past Sunday, July 13, the most glittering race of the 105-year-old Bangalore Turf Club's summer season, the Zavaray S Poonawalla Bangalore Summer Derby, was won by the favourite, Fynbos, who, with this win, claimed her fourth championship. The excitement that continues to surround the racing season is an ode to the city’s longstanding equestrian culture, lovingly stewarded by its rulers and administrators through the ages. If Tipu Sultan is credited with founding the Kunigal Stud Farm, the oldest continuously operated stud farm in India, the Mysore Mahara-jas, like several British Residents and ‘Commissioners of Mysore, were passionate horsemen. More recently, homegrown business baron Vijay Mallya revitalised horse racing in the city, after his company, United Racing & Bloodstock Breeders Ltd, won the bid for the lease of the Kunigal Stud Farm for 30 years (1992-2022)

- Roopa Pai

Coincidentally, yesterday, July 14, was the 23lst birthday of one such horse-loving Mysore royal, Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar; it was during his reign that the very first recorded horse race in Bangalore was run, on October 14, 1811. Unfortunately for Mummadi, his significant contributions to the fashioning of Mysore into a culturally vibrant, educationally forward, liberal-thinking, inclusive, and yes, horse-loving space, the very attributes that define Bangalore today, are not celebrated enough. For although his reign lasted close to seven decades (1799-1868), it fell to Mummadi’s fate that he would only be the titular ruler for 37 of those years.