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.”
Late this May, I managed to arrange for the two to meet. One evening, I met Kader near his home near the city centre—he was visiting from Pune, where he had started teaching since our first meeting. On my motorbike, we rode a few kilometres east to Shinde’s house, a bungalow named Royal Touch after the first horse he ever won on. Shinde’s young granddaughter showed us in. The two men embraced and exchanged kisses on the cheek. With Aslam addressing Shinde fondly as bhau, and Shinde reciprocating with bhaijaan, they began to reminisce.
“There were only four or five of us,” Shinde said, “—Aslam, Robin Corner, Warren Singh and myself—who were ‘public-choice’ jockeys”: with them, fans bet on whichever horse their favoured man was riding, rather than, as is usual, on a favoured horse regardless of its jockey. “We were not bothered about the odds,” Kader said. “We studied the field and made sure we brought our horse to the winning post every time we rode. But there are races which are out of your control.”
Kader recalled riding Elusive Pimpernel, and Shinde listed his own favourites: Squanderer—among the greatest Indian-bred horses ever, who passed away in 2000—and Classic Story—“when let go she’d burst with a great run.” Shinde rode Classic Story to victory at two classics, first in Bengaluru and soon after in Pune, in 1990. “I’d rate that horse and those races as my career best,” he said. Both named Rashid Rustomji Byramji, a horse trainer from Bengaluru, as the best one they ever rode for. He never told them how to ride, they said, but trusted them to run their own race.
I’d met Byramji, now 83 years old, on another day at the turf club last year. He remembered Shinde with particular affection. “There were so many races when I knew for a fact that the horse stood no chance,” he told me, “but then there was Vasant in the saddle, and somehow he knew how to get the best out of his runners.” At one point, to prepare Shinde for an international career that never really took off, Byramji hired him an English teacher. “I remember the tutor, a lady, coming back to me after two days of the lessons,” he said, “and exclaiming, ‘It’s impossible for me to teach that man any English, because the only things he speaks about are horses and racing.'”