Professionalismand horsemanship, the two virtues of the King of Sports that are rarely on display nowadays, both came to the fore at the Mahalaxmi racecourse as The Proletarian and Top Gun notched impressive victories last week. This was no singular feat of any individual but both The Proletarian and Top Gun, jockeys Rajinder and Pesi Shroff and trainers Imtiaz Sait and Shiraz Sunderji, shared the honours of the victory. 

Trainer Imtiaz Sait, who got his act together towards the end of the Pune season, continues to pick events at will. A lot of careful thought and planning seems to be going in the placing of his wards currently. The results of these manoeuvres have been fantastic so far. The Proletarian (Conquering Hero-Nica Libre) scored a fluke victory in the RWITC Invitational Trophy on the concluding day of the Pune season but last Sunday he was tuned with an eye on the A. C. Ardeshir Trophy (Gr.2). Jockey Rajinder did a magnificent job in settling the bay to be in close touch with the leaders and then timed his challenge to perfection. The Conquering Hero progeny responded in true cavalier style to stop both Ocean Breeze and Pleasures in their tracks.

Pleasures took charge of the running in her customary fashion but failed to sustain towards the fag end as first Ocean Breeze and then The Proletarian swooped on her. Yet the mare finished a gallant third ahead of Adamile and Perceived Value, who took her own sweet time to warm up. Acrobat did not have the luck of the race as he came charging towards the inner rails only to run into a wall of horses.

Austral (Green Forest-Bauneamon) provided Imtiaz his first opportunity of the day to lead a winner though it was not as planned by the veteran. Favouritism in this race was thrust on the filly Mia Senora after Danger Zone was withdrawn under unfortunate circumstances. Austral broke away from the barriers and much to the chagrin of his rivals he refused to throw in the towel. C. Alford thus got a rare taste of success at this centre. Victory March with C. Rajendra in saddle provided Imtiaz with a grand treble as the filly streaked clear of her rivals after negotiating the bend. Imtiaz was saddling this daughter of Portroe for the first time after she migrated from Narendra Lagad’s yards. 

Jockey Rajendra had an armchair ride earlier in the day atop the got-abroad filly Centenary (Storm Bird-Legarto), trained by Jaggy Dhariwal for Dr Vijay Mallya. The two-year-old bay filly Divine Honey (Alnasr Alwasheek-Angel Heights) gave none of her rivals any opportunity to run close as she sped away for an emphatic victory in the J. Rustomji Soparivala Trophy. This bay from Hanut Singh’s yard opened favourite to win at 5 to 4 against and for no logical reason ended up at 5 to 1. One possible reason could be that only a selected few are privy to the inside information of Hanut’s horses. Forest Angel carried the public purse but was left stranded by the winner and even lost the runner-up berth to Divine Elegance who drifted out alarmingly in the straight. Tagged for Terror found some smart money coming on him but failed to justify this optimistic venture. 

The sparingly raced bay Top Gun, brought in-foal to Animate and who is by Alhijaz, recorded his fourth straight victory in only the fifth start of his career. With Mark Gallagher ineligible to ride in this event and C. Rajendra doing services for Shapoor Mistry, trainer Shiraz Sunderji requisitioned the services of Pesi Shroff for Top Gun. This proved to be a boon for the horse in the end. Allowing Aspiring Star to call the shots in the early part of the race, Pesi had Top Gun running on the bit till the leader started retreating. Here the ace jockey changed gears on Top Gun who zoomed ahead to wrest the lead. Pesi skilfully kept Top Gun going even as Consortium came with an intimidating run on his outside. 

Though Potential Force, Blushing Minstrel, Top Gun, Latest News and to some extent Safari Girl justified the faith reposed in them by the punters, Survee’s Pet, Blue Butterfly, Acharya and Loyal Rebel made a solid dent in their profits. Potential Force though not able to chart a straight course proved too could for his rivals in the first race. Safari Girl, after facing a rough passage in the earlier stages of the race, unleashed a powerful run in the straight that shocked Nothing Better virtually at the post.