03 February,2011 08:17 AM IST | | Prakash Gosavi
If you have never attended the Derby before, don't worry, there's always a first time. Here's a small primer that will save you the blushes if you come across another first-timer on Sunday at the Mahalaxmi racecourse.
>> A Derby is a race that decides the champion horse. Every country has one ufffd in England it's called the Epsom Derby, in America it's the Kentucky Derby, and we call ours the Indian Derby, or rather the McDowell Signature Indian Derby as Vijay Mallya's UB Group have been sponsoring the race since 1985.
>> A horse can run in the Indian Derby only once, when he or she is a four-year-old. So, all horses running on Sunday were born in 2007, which makes them qualify for the 2011 Derby.
>> The Derby race distance is a mile and a half, or 2.4 km. Since the Mahalaxmi oval is precisely that long, the Derby horses will be loaded into the starting gates close to the winning post which they will cross twice ufffd once immediately on the jump, and later at the finish to decide the result.
>> The Mahalaxmi racecourse was styled on Australia's Melbourne racecourse and built over 100 years ago. Sir CN Wadia, founder of Bombay Dyeing, was chiefly instrumental in its creation.
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>> The Derby winner will take about only two-and-a-half minutes to cover the mile-and-a-half trip, so in a way, except for the winner, four years of arduous training and preparation will be undone in just 150 seconds!
lOnly thoroughbreds are allowed to race, and they are the ones whose ancestry can be traced back (meticulous records are preserved by the authorities) to more than 300 years to only three Arabian stallions, who were mated with a few Irish mares.
>> Every horse owner has his unique racing colours comprising various designs for a jockey's shirt, sleeves and cap. They are called 'silks'. If an owner has many horses in the same race, all their jockeys wear the same colours on the shirt, but different coloured caps to help identification. The race caller, who gives live commentary of the races, identifies horses by the colours of the jockey's silks.
>> Dr MAM Ramaswamy, the biggest horse owner in the history of the Indian turf, had to wait for nearly two decades to win the Indian Derby in his own silks. Amazing Bay won it for him in 1996. He also holds the record for maximum Derbies by an owner (8).
>> Trainer Rashid Byramji has the most impressive record in the Derby. He has won the race 11 times including two hat-tricks, and once four-in-a-row.
>> Pesi Shroff (above) holds the record for eight Derby victories as a jockey. As a trainer, he won his first Derby last year with Jacqueline. Shroff has three runners in Sunday's Derby: Xisca, Macchupicchu and Berlusconi. He is also the only jockey to score a hat-trick with Exhilaration (1989), Desert Warrior (1990) and Starfire Girl (1991).
>> Dr Vijay Mallya's Supervite (1999) was the only Derby winner to be upgraded as winner in the record books after actual winner Saddle Up (also owned by Dr Mallya) was disqualified for testing positive for a banned substance.
>> The races are timed by an electronic timer operated by an electronic beam so that the timing of a race is accurate to the hundredth of a second, and devoid of human error.
>> The photo finish camera can differentiate between two horses finishing one-hundredth of a second apart.
>> The only time the photo finish camera failed was in the 1963 Derby. The judge declared Rocklie as winner and Mount Everest as runner-up based on his naked eye judgement.
>> Astonish, bred at Poonawalla Stud Farms, was the first Indian Derby winner to win abroad. He won the Red Room Handicap (1994) at Sha Tin racetrack in Hong Kong.
