The racing at Bangalore is set to resume on the 8th of May, when the 26 race day Summer Season is scheduled to take off. The rumour mongers, as always, have been speculating about the timely start of the season. Some have been heard pleading the cases of non performing professionals, while the others are wondering about the state of the race track. It is learnt that most issues have been resolved, and the authorities at the BTC are pretty confident of beginning the season on the announced date. Although there have been no rains so far in the month of April, the preparation of the track is in full swing. The Club is ready to spend that extra buck and source enough water to give a proper soaking to the turf.

One bit of news bothering the trainers is the closure of the outer sand track .The Club was forced to close this facility for the next ten weeks due to the construction of a boundary wall. This exercise was started a couple of days ago. Our readers may remember that due to the road widening works of the Bangalore City Corporation, the BTC had lost many acres of land. This resulted in a loss of over a 100 stables and the demolition of the affected parts of the boundary wall in that area. The Club has now begun work on this 14 feet high wall which has a length of over 600 metres. Since this is going to affect the outer sand track between the 800 metres and the 200 metres marker, the said facility has been closed for the season.

In order to create an equally good training track, the old inner sand track has been dug up and widened. The old sand has been totally removed and new sand has been put in place. Horses shall be worked on the two extremes of this track. The inner part has been earmarked for the slow work while the new strip shall be used by the gallopers. With the large number of horses working every morning, the Club shall be forced to keep this open for an extended period of time. It will also be prudent for trainers to slot fixed times for their wards, since a non-planned programme would lead to crowding of the track. This may also lead to avoidable incidents taking place in the training areas. Some horses were worked for the first time on the track this morning. The jockeys reported that they were comfortable with the new arrangement. It is learnt that the outer grass strip of the actual race track shall be made available for exercising the 3 year olds and horses in the highest class. This facility for trackwork shall be opened once a week during the coming season.

There will be two separate groups of people who would be hard pressed to handle this new scenario. The first is the huge lot of serious racegoers. This group bases their calculations on the track work printed in the race books and newspapers. They have their own set of par timings, and decide to wager on racehorses after deciding that the said horse has "Worked Well". It will take some time before this group arrives at a standard set of trackwork timings .During the pendancy of that period, racegoers will fall prey to "inside information" and "rumours" that are a part and parcel of racing all over the world.

The second lot of people who would be upset by the new developments are a handful of trainers who had gotten used to preparing their wards on the inner sand track. These are typically "Big Gambling" stables, which like to work their horses without drawing the attention of the many track reporters present at the BTC every morning. In the days gone by, these track reporters would be concentrating on the outer strip while one odd horse would go a solid gallop on the inner track. All this will end now. It will be a level playing field for all concerned.

There is no doubt that the racing at Bangalore is extremely popular with racegoers all over the country. The recently concluded Winter Season saw about 42% first favourites winning their races. This is vastly different from the scenes unfolding at other racing centres in the country. With this high percentage of public choices winning at this centre, the racing public is obviously awaiting a timely start to the Bangalore Summer Season.