Mahalaxmi Race Course

This guide to Mahalaxmi Race Course in Mumbai opens in 1949, two years after independence, when the track was still a British institution of English horses, English rules and foreign jockeys in the winner's circle. It traces the course back to 1883, when Parsi industrialist Sir Cusrow Wadia turned tidal marshland into a racecourse modeled on a Melbourne grandstand, and to 1935, when a title from King George the Fifth made the club Royal. The same heritage grandstand still presides over Derby day every February.