It was good to see that the top administrators of sport and the professionals including the owners sportingly agree to race a couple of days at Mysore before the thunder of hooves provides a lyrical ring and signals the start of the winter racing season at the Bangalore Turf Club (BTC) on Dec 2. BTC chairman, Shivkumar Kheny, disclosed that, in the interest of racing, the new management committee of the club approached the Mysore Race Club (MRC) to jointly conduct two days of racing on Friday, Nov 18 and Saturday, Nov 26before the track at BTC is ready for the galloping goldmines to gallop to fame this winter. And MRC spearheaded by Y B Ganesh readily agreed to play hosts, offering all the required facilities including 50 stables for horses coming from Bengaluru to compete at Mysuru. "We understand that a small portion of the track at BTC is not ready and the club needs a couple of weeks to get the track back in ship-shape condition. On a proposal from BTC, the MRC committee decided to readily chip in and provide support to all the segments of the sport," said MRC chairman, Ganesh. 

Shivkumar Kheny revealed that after a discussion with the members of the Karnataka Trainers Association (KTA), it was clear that the onus was on BTC to start the winter season on Nov 18, taking into account that a number of classic hopefuls needed a lead-up race before going into the classics in December. "It was a pressure situation. The horticulture experts made it clear that the track will only be fit and ready by the end of the month and we really had no choice but to delay the start. But following exchange of ideas and more importantly the willingness of the mandarins of the two clubs to address the issue and provide a healthy solution in the interest of the game, we got cracking and it worked out," said Kheny.

A couple of leading trainers pointed out that the fact that the main Mysore season concluded only 10 days before and that the MRC track is in ship-shape condition made it easy and many members of the KTA were happy to continue racing in the royal city before the winter season kicks-off on Dec 2. It is learnt that BTC will sponsor four races each on the two days and MRC will frame an equal number of races from their end. Most of the trainers at BTC have assured that they will enter sufficient horses and that no race framed by BTC will be declared void for paucity of acceptors. 

So the stage is set and the Mysore racing buffs will again get to witness a good number of classic hopefuls parade their skills after the Betway Mysore Derby humdinger.