AT 5:30 ON A JANUARY MORNING LAST YEAR, I arrived at the Bangalore Turf Club, looking to renew my license as an exercise rider. The winter racing season was on, and horses galloped down the track on training runs. I walked to the far end of the course, to the riding ring of the Bangalore Amateur Riding Institute, the Turf Club’s equestrian school. Aslam Kader stood at the fence, his arms folded and legs apart, as if he were astride a horse. He screamed at a youngster, “Ghode pe sawaar hain ya gadhey pe?”—Are you riding a horse or a donkey?
Kader, nicknamed AK-47—a nod to his feather-light riding weight—is a legend of Indian racing. Now aged 52, Kader won his first race in 1979, and by his retirement in 2003 boasted 1,717 victories, including 86 in classics—the most celebrated races, held about 35 times a year across India in Kader’s time, though more frequently today. If you spent a day at the races anywhere in India from the 1980s to the early 2000s, you were bound to hear his name—“Aslam Kader, sabka father,” fans would chorus—and another alongside it: that of Vasant Shinde, who won 114 classics in a career that ran from 1972 to 1994, amassing 1,982 triumphs. The two champions rode against each other thousands of times over the 16 years their careers overlapped, forging one of the most famous rivalries in Indian racing—one fans still delight in today.
Growing up in Bengaluru, I had seen Kader racing, but this was the first time we’d met. I joined him and his charges—Kader is now a teacher—as they trooped from the riding ring to the jockeys’ room for extra practice on a riding simulator. On the way, Kader corrected a youngster on the record of Elusive Pimpernel, a horse he rode in 12 races. “22 victories of 23 times he ran,” Kader asserted. Then he started on the beauty and elegance of Astounding—one of his dearest mounts, on whom he won an Indian Derby and a Chief Justice Cup. He piled compliments on his great rival: “Vasant Shinde remains to this day one of the greatest, and India’s most naturally gifted champion jockey.”
COMMENT