The sunny Saturday afternoon at RCTC belonged to the punters and the stable of owner Joydeep Datta Gupta who won the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Cup for the third time in seven years. Chestnut gelding Ramiel (Win Legend – Angelique) lived up to expectations as the Bharath Singh-trained ward was ridden to a much-expected triumph by jockey Vivek. It was a straight forward ride in the marathon 2800 metres which saw the public fancy lose about four lengths at the start. However, second favourite Amber Knight set a pretty good pace to make it a genuinely run race despite the small field. The six-year-old bay gelding was collared by Ramiel at the 1000m marker and Vivek never looked back thereafter. However, Amber Knight showed remarkable improvement to end up a moderate three lengths behind the winner and now finds himself in Class I after the handicapper penalised him a hefty 7kg. The other two runners were never in the race.

Punters were in their glory under the bright spring sunshine as all six favourites made a clean sweep of the brief card. All six were at playable odds – none of them being below 55/100 which was Ramiel’s price. Macchiato, Good Deeds and Earth were all above 6/4. The last named was given a tough fight by Salome in the seven furlong race for The Hall Of Famer Cup. Piloted by Neeraj Rawal, Sanjay Kolse – trained Earth (Win Legend – Wind Of Soul) was always in touch with the front-runner and finally pegged her back by just over a length.

The mile race for The Philippine Cup was another small field of four runners which nevertheless witnessed a close finish. Patrick Quinn-trained Snowpiercer (Excellent Art – Ice Glacier) was a winner at every post to give Suraj Narredu the first of his hat-trick of wins. Vivek rode a clever race on the normally front-running Jahzara for her to finish quite close up. In fact, all three winning rides of Suraj made every post a winning one to make it just another day at the office for him.

Arti Doctor-trained filly Sky Force (Fiero – Ha Ha Tonka) bagged the Carring Minds Cup without batting an eyelid from the late finishing Asagiri. Good Deeds (Roderic O’Connor-Remembrance Of You) had to be hard ridden in the 2400 metres race for The Flamenco Dancer Handicap to keep at bay the fast-finishing No Worry who produced a marvellous gallop despite carrying 60kg. It will be interesting to watch where his mentor enters the four-year-old gelding in his next essay.

The afternoon commenced with the leading trainer and jockey combo of Aashay Doctor and R Vaibhav delivering the goods with Macchiato (Sanus Per Aquam – Arabica) in the mile race for The Oakmead Handicap. However, the one for the notebook is definitely Bandukwali – the other fancied runner in the race. It was a fun and frolic afternoon for everyone except the ‘ring-masters’ for a change – meaning of course the bookmakers ring.
 
The afternoon ended with a colourful ‘pony race‘ for kids to make it even more memorable. As the ring-masters were forbidden from operating in this race – it would be interesting to know how many hardcore regulars bet among each other on the winner of the race – just ‘kidding’ !