While the Derbies and the juvenile millions carry huge purses, graded
races for older horses suffer in comparison. We have a situation where
the two best horses racing in the country today have to battle it out
for a winner's purse of less than Rs.10 lakhs in the supposedly
prestigious Maharaja's Cup while the winner of the Bangalore Juvenile
Million in the winter won a whopping Rs.12 lakhs for his efforts. The
same is the case in every turf club in the country. So many of the
millionaire juveniles fade out and are not heard of after one odd
success. Their claim to fame begins and ends with victory in a juvenile
million race. It is super stars like Southern Empire and Holding Court
which draw crowds to the race courses and the races where such stars in
the fray should be more attractive by offering better stakes than is
obtaining now.
The Mumbai season offers stake money of about Rs.10 crores and the
racing season is spread over 45 days. The major races take the lion’s
share and this leaves very little for the majority of races which is
close to 350 races. This is not a healthy trend because stake money has
to be spread out so that it reaches out to more people. The greater the
spread, the better it is for racing. Allowance of course has to be made
to offer reasonably good stakes for big races but not at the cost of
depriving the majority of handicap races which is the lifeline of the
sport. A centre like Hyderabad has the best spread of stake money and
the top four trainers there earn in excess of over Rs 60 lakhs for their
owners every year. This also helps more number of owners to sustain in
the sport.
These are times when sponsors are willing to open their purses to hog
the limelight. It would be in the best interest of everyone concerned if
a part of the sponsorship money that is on offer for individual races is
added to the overall stake money so that stakes can be raised to healthy
levels on occasions when the sweepstakes result in swelling the amount
beyond the advertised stakes.
More importantly, in an eagerness to go in for newer sponsors, the loyal
sponsors who stood by the sport for decades also need to be taken care
of. One has seen big companies disappear from the scene after sponsoring
for a year or two. The ITC which once sponsored Invitation Cup races in
a big way have long back deserted the sport and the Turf Authorities of
India are yet a find a sponsor for the mega event. This is so because
the mileage from the sport is next to nothing. In the context of this,
the turf clubs would be careful while handing out plum events to new
comers at the expense of loyalists if only because they offer higher
sponsorship.
Interestingly, the McDowell Company is perhaps the longest sponsor of
any race in the history of racing. The UB Group which owns McDowell
Company has been sponsoring the event for the last 27 years and as such,
the company deserves a big thank you from the racing fraternity. Even
the renowned Epsom Derby hasn’t had a single sponsor for such a long
period.
The sponsorship of the Bangalore Derby too is almost completing 20 years
of successful association with Kingfisher, another UB Group company.
