INDIAN HORSE RACING: A SYNDICATE MASQUERADING AS A SPORT

Indian Horse Racing: A Syndicate Masquerading as a Sport 

Indian horse racing has ceased to be a sport. It is now a closed syndicate, run by invisible hands, where the punter is nothing more than prey. The system is so brazen that deception is no longer hidden—it is performed in plain sight.

Every other race day delivers the same farce: odds-on favourites imploding, form books rendered useless, and “explanations” so insulting that they assume the betting public to be intellectually vacant. *This is not competition. This is theatre—scripted, rehearsed, and monetised.* 

What makes the rot incurable is the total abdication of authority.

The Stewards, entrusted with safeguarding integrity, have reduced themselves to rubber stamps in blazers. There is no appetite to interrogate, no courage to question repeat patterns, and no urgency to protect the sport. Inquiries are conducted only to create the illusion that something was done; conclusions are pre-decided; files are closed, and silence restored.

At the centre of this decay stands a powerful trainer in Western India, operating with such impunity that the damage inflicted on racing’s credibility appears deliberate. Results defy logic with numbing regularity, yet scrutiny never follows. In any functioning jurisdiction, such a record would invite relentless investigation. In India, it invites protection.

Inside the administration, the truth is neither hidden nor denied—it is managed.

Half the establishment feeds off the system, directly or indirectly. The other half—spineless, compromised, or intimidated—watches in mute acceptance as the sport bleeds. Governance has been replaced by collusion, regulation by selective blindness, and leadership by convenient amnesia.

The consequences are catastrophic.

Honest professionals are suffocated.

Genuine owners are driven away.

The punter—whose money sustains this ecosystem—is systematically fleeced.

Indian horse racing is not dying because of lack of horses, jockeys, or fans. It is dying because corruption has been normalised and accountability deliberately dismantled.

This is not decline.

This is capture.

And unless the cartel is confronted—by fearless stewards, independent oversight, and public exposure—the sport will continue its march towards irrelevance, remembered not for its champions, but for the confidence with which it cheated its own people.