Despite the pouring rain that flooded the city on Wednesday, the RCTC mandarins did rather well to conduct fair racing on a resilient monsoon track. There was a delay of half-an-hour and the first race commenced at 2.00pm. The subsequent races were held every 25 minutes.

The main event of the afternoon, The Desert Shot Cup, saw top-weight Amorous White (Stern Opinion-Adios Meadowlake), from Vikash Jaiswal’s yard, make every post a winning one, thereby increasing apprentice Sujit Kumar Paswan’s chances of garnering the ‘Best Apprentice’ award. Perpetual Winning challenged strongly but failed narrowly. Because of a soaking wet saddle, Chisty had to declare 3kg over-weight on Perpetual Winning. Otherwise, the overweight would have been about 1.5kg.

Apprentice Paswan increased his lead over Rupal Singh by claiming the very next race (which was also the last event of the day) while astride the well-backed Optimum (Ontario-Oscar Silk), also from Vikash Jaiswal’s yard. The apprentice rode a flawless race in that he placed his mount in a box seat from the outset and shot ahead in the straight, finally staving off a stiff challenge from Mrs Willy Nilly.

Jockey Suraj Narredu notched up victories in the first two races with Avellino and Big Star. In the race for the ‘jockeys’ championship’, the double gives him a thin edge over Nikhil Naidu who pulled off a difficult win with Bath-trained Whispering Grass by keeping a fast-finishing Kimaya at bay in the 1400m race for The Aazish Plate. Suraj opened his account while astride James McKeown-trained Avellino (Top Class-Riverdown Empress) in the 2000m race for the Glotik Handicap. Though he was taken wide by the front-runner Cool Conqueror, Avellino’s superior class saw him through. He seems to be enjoying the longer trips. Suraj next took no chances with his next mount Big Star (Western Aristocrat-Knockenduff) and took him  to the helm of affairs as the gates opened. None of the others could match strides with the long-striding five-year-old.    

The heavy-weights in the race for three-year-olds, The Aazish Plate, such as Script, Atom and Eastern Crown, failed to find their footing. It was left to the bottom-weights Whispering Grass(Sedgefield-Willow Point) and Kimaya to fight out the finish. Jockey Imran Chisty on the latter declared 1.5kg over-weight and took the home-turn five wide – otherwise the filly may have come up trumps.

Javed Khan-trained Carpe Noctem (Surf Rider-Princess Helen) pulled off a difficult win against Lumenac in the race for Alarico Handicap. Able apprentice Rupal Singh had to pull out all stops to land the spoils over the five-and-half furlong sprint. Lumenac made things difficult for him as he cut across his path in the straight but Carpe Noctem moved up with a second wind  on the outside to pip the former at the wire.

Glorious Leaps (Lucifer Sam-Perfect Rhythm) was piloted by DS Deora to a convincing victory over Miami in the  sprint for The Sunbird Handicap. The latter may be pining for a longer trip but her mentor will know best. Fancied by a section of punters, Uncrowned King remained uncrowned after a slow beginning. One is not quite sure why he was fancied but finishing fourth was not such a bad show.