Pass or Fail. The professionals at the Bangalore Turf Club (BTC), horse owners, administrators and racing buffs nervously awaited the result of the first test of  samples of 665 horses for Glanders sent to National Research Centre On Equines on Dec 19. The result obtained on Jan 2 from NRCE asked for five repeat samples and the fact that one youngster from a leading stud farm in Punjab has joined the list of three from Coimbatore and an older horse from the Bangalore Ameteur Riding Institute (BARI) has pushed the racing fraternity in South, back against the wall, news coming in from Hyderabad Race Club (HRC) confirming that two horses at HRC too failed the final test, dashing the hopes of racing resuming in the Charminar city before the monsoon season in July. It maybe recalled that Glanders first raised it's ugly head in Hyderabad and despite the men and machinery tirelessly working to curtail the spread of this highly contagious disease, HRC is still struggling to successfully eradicate the dreaded zoonotic disease. HRC in fact has recorded the highest number of glanders cases so far and with a couple of new additions surfacing, each time the results are furnished, HRC to say the least is devastated, aware that a couple of bad decisions, made in the past has cost the club dear.

BTC too initially failed to address the issue on war footing, choosing to first do battle with kid gloves before the five positive cases jolted the mandarins of the club and the veterinary department headed by Senthil Kumar. Now that five new suspected positive cases have come to light after the first of the mandatory three-cycle test required to gain a clear certificate from NRCE, the owners at this centre are a worried lot and most small owners, it is learnt are ready and willing to sell their horses at discounted prices, but the desperate sales tag too is not generating interest with no buyers ready to make even a small investment in this hazy scenario.

The youngsters from the stud farm in Coimbatore are seriously compounding the problems. After one procured from the farm in Inayathullah's yard tested positive in the first count, another from the same farm under the care of Inayathullah, Icing, an unraced youngster is under the radar. Panache from the stables of Dominic too is required to send paired serum samples and nasal swabs (in triplicate) to NRCE (Hisar) and it is learnt the animal husbandry department vets in control at BTC are sending out the samples on Sunday. Now that one from a farm in Punjab, Emergent from Darius Byramji's yard is also in the suspect list, the vets are looking at the big picture, understanding that the ground reality is projecting a fearful picture. The fact that 660 out of 665 tested negative is good and things appear to look under control, but in this case, one single positive result means that the cycle must be repeated again after 21 days and add to it the 10-days period required for testing 665 samples all over again, a month is lost without any fruitful result.

Now that most number of youngsters declared positive are from a farm in Coimbatore, the situation warrants that the clubs must isolate horses, who have come from Coimbatore and strictly monitor their health conditions. The government vets on the job, it is learnt are looking to employ different measures to arrest the slide and it must be mentioned that a much clearer picture will emerge in the next three weeks, be it deterioration or improvement in health.

Another issue which is causing concern is that many trainers from the three affected South centres are out holidaying, only passing instructions to their jamadars and the syces on phone. This is just not done. It simply put, is a case of "When Rome was burning, Nero was Fiddling".

Meanwhile the Mysore Race Club (MRC) are awaiting the result of the 455 samples. The management committee headed by the new chairman, KT Balakrishna is confident that they will gain an all negative result taking into account that only one horse which came from Chennai and bred at the Coimbatore farm tested positive before he succumbed to the disease, while the rest at this campus were free from the dreaded disease.