Niranjan Singh, the Royal Western India Turf Club Ltd handicapper, who has been excelling at the art of handicapping for the last two years, produced his best on Sunday when as many as five horses passed the winning post almost together.
Niranjan Singh, the Royal Western India Turf Club Ltd handicapper, who has been excelling at the art of handicapping for the last two years, produced his best on Sunday when as many as five horses passed the winning post almost together.
The dream finish was thrown up in the Manitou Trophy when Barbara, Solor, Deep Purple, Bolero and Track Thunder all crossed the wire in a span of only one-twentieth of a second!
So close was the finish that even a seasoned race caller like Deepak Rajpal was stumped. "Barbara may have got the better of them all," he shouted into the microphone, while the photo finish camera showed Solor (P Mulrennan up) to have won by a short head from Barbara (C Rajendra up) and Deep Purple (NG McCullagh up) dead-heated for the second place, with Track Thunder (Neeraj Rawal up) a neck away, fourth, and the fifth-placed Bolero (SA DeSousa up) another short-head off.
For those, who may not know what 'handicapper' means in racing parlance, here is the definition. Horses have different ability; some are fast, others are slow. A handicapper is an expert employed by the race club whose job is to assign weights to horses of different ability in such a way so that all horses have an equal chance of winning. He tried to manage it by asking the faster horses to carry more weight, so that the laggards with light weight on their backs can match strides with them and make it a close race. Generally despite a handicapper's best efforts, only 10% races result in a close finish between two horses, and a three-horse finish is even more rare. A photo finish involving four or more horses is so rare in racing, it has a special termu00a0-- 'blanket' finish, originating from the idea that one blanket can cover all those horses in such a tight finish.
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