Friday 20 February 2015

20th February 1847 Royal Turf Club Of Kolkata Established

Royal Calcutta Turf Club

Location:11 Russell Street
Time to Visit: Any time of the day
Preferred Timings: 10 A.M. - 12 P.M. & 3 P.M. - 5 P.M
Admission Fee: Free. But one has to be recommended by a Club Member or a Stand Member
How to Reach: Local buses and metered taxis are readily available from various parts of Kolkata. One can also avail the underground Metro Rail
Photography / Video charges: Nil
Nearest Railway Station:Howrah
Nearest Metro Station: Park Street
Nearest Functional Metro Station: Park Street
Nearest International Airport: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport
Time required for sightseeing:Around 1 hour

Special Event / Annual Event

Races are held throughout the year. Check out with the Royal Calcutta Turf Club authorities for exact dates

Nearby Tourist Attractions

Park Street, Maidan, Indian Museum and Asiatic Society

Detailed Content of The Royal Calcutta Turf Club

As far as organized racing in India is concerned, the Royal Calcutta Turf Club is the pioneer. RCTC was born in the year 1847 and in a short span of 40 years, RCTC was bestowed with exclusive rights to administer horse racing throughout the subcontinent. At one time, the RCTC exercised full control over as many as 73 racing centers ranging from Peshawar to Mandalay.
As a matter of fact, RCTC was the first center in the entire subcontinent to stage the Derby race in the year 1842. However, in the year 1856, the Derby stakes made way for the Viceroy's Cup and again after a long 105 years came to be known as Queen Elizabeth II Cup. As the stature of the Club grew bigger and bigger, it was thought appropriate to bestow the Club with the title "Royal" . Thus in the year 1912, the Calcutta Race Course was rechristened as the Royal Calcutta Turf Club.
The Royal Calcutta Turf Club has a checkered history and the British royalty like His Excellency King George V had visited this hallowed club in the year 1905. Royal Calcutta Turf Club being a pioneer as far as Derby races in the subcontinent is concerned, was the first to undertake the construction of the existing Monsoon tracks. The track was unique and in those days perhaps a-one-of-its-kind track in the world in that it was one of the quickest draining track one could imagine. The Royal Calcutta Turf Club also introduced the state-of-the-art "Randwick Rails" which is now universally used by race courses all over the world. But, in those days, the Randwick Rails were a novelty.
The huge stands of the Royal Calcutta Turf Club amidst the lush greenery and the architectural grandeur of Victoria Memorial on the distant horizon standing like a beacon of hope makes for a truly kaleidoscopic vignette.
An In-house Club, a well stocked library, Billiards/Snooker Room, Bars which includes the exclusive Ladies Bar, all pamper the discerning guests. Like any European club, the RCTC too has a strict dress code and guests are expected to be dressed elegantly.
The day to day activities of the Club is managed by a core group of 5 Club Members who have been designated as - "Stewards". The Stewards are elected in the Annual General Meeting and they hold office from 1st April to 31st March of the following year. The stewards in turn elect from among them a person capability and administrative acumen to the position of a Chairman who is designated as a Senior Steward of the Club.
In the days of yore, jockeys and trainers had to make their own arrangements as far as stabling was concerned. But, ever since 1934, RCTC has built its own stables, 361 in all at Hastings and each stable is equipped with rolling rings, fodder and tack rooms. Apart from safe keeping of horses, there is adequate provision for accommodation of jockeys and trainers at the Griffin Block. A state-of-the-art Veterinary clinic is also there which is looked after by a knowledgeable Veterinary Officer. And to the utter delight of the horse owners, an exclusive race horse owner's lounge has been built where in a laidback ambience, the owners can come with their family and spend quality time with the horses they own.
Membership of the Royal Calcutta Turf Club is a virtual Who's Who of the society. There are two types of membership available. One is Club Member and the other is Stand Member. Needless to say, the membership of this exclusive club don't come cheap. While a Club Member has to dish out Rs.1 Lakh, the Stand Member has to part away with Rs.50,000.
To boost membership, a thorough renovation of the Corporate office located at 11 Russell Street whose majestic Palladian edifice has been crumbling due to lack of maintenance, is now being rebuilt on a grandiose scale and once complete it will have three specialty restaurants, swimming pool, squash cout, health club, beauty salon, a well stocked library and a state-of-the-art museum which will showcase the evolution of horse racing in India. The RCTC stewards are of the opinion that with a swanky all-under-one-roof Club and the exclusivity that comes by virtue of being Asia's first racecourse will go a long way in reviving the glory days of the past.
The icing on the cake though is, come 2006 and Royal Calcutta Turf Club or RCTC will be among the first race courses in India where night racing will be reality.

Royal Calcutta Turf Club

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Royal Calcutta Turf Club
Old Royal Calcutta Race Stands.jpg
Calcutta Turf Club race course stands before 1905
LocationKolkataWest Bengal, India
Coordinates22.550881°N 88.350865°ECoordinates22.550881°N 88.350865°E
Date opened1847
Race typeHorse racing
Course typeGrass
Official website
The Royal Calcutta Turf Club (RCTC), founded in 1847 in Calcutta, British India (now Kolkata, India), became the premier horse racing organization in India during the British Raj. At one time it was the governing body for almost all courses in the sub-continent, defining and applying the rules that governed the sport. During its heyday the races it organized were among the most important social events of the calendar, opened by the Viceroy of India. During the 1930s the Calcutta Derby Sweeps, organized by the club, was the largest sweepstake in the world. It is still an exclusive private club and still operates the Kolkata Race Course.

Origins[edit]

Governor Richard Wellesleydisapproved of organized racing, and banned it in 1798.
Calcutta was the first base of British power in India. With an army based on cavalry, sports such as hunting, polo and racing were naturally important.[1]Organized horse races were first held in India on 16 January 1769 at Akra, near Calcutta, where they were held for the next forty years.[2] At first they were run on a rough, narrow, temporary course. Governor Lord Wellesley prohibited horse racing in 1798, but five years later the Bengal Jockey Club resumed racing at Akra. The races moved to the Maidan area of Calcutta in 1809, where they are still held. In 1812 the club laid out a new course at approximately the current race course location.[3] The race course is in the southwest part of the Maidan. A viewing stand was built in 1820, later to be extensively modified.[4]
Races were run in the comparative cool of mornings just after sunrise, usually in five heats of 2.5 miles (4.0 km). The idea was to test both the speed and the stamina of the horse. If the result was not decided in the morning the heats were resumed after sunset. The British press regularly published the Calcutta race results. In 1825 the Calcutta Welter, the main horse racing event in India, was moved to the new course. The Calcutta Derby Stakes began in 1842, where maiden Arabs ran over 2.5 miles (4.0 km) for exceptionally high prizes.[3]

Foundation and growth[edit]

The Calcutta Turf Club was founded on 20 February 1847.[5] The purpose was to regulate all aspects of horse racing in Calcutta. Members of the club were elected by ballot. A five-person committee ran the club, and five stewards ran the races. In 1856 the Calcutta Derby was replaced by the Viceroy's Cup.[3] Spectators of this race were admitted by invitation only.[6] In 1860 Lord Ulrich Browne came into the Calcutta racing scene, which he would dominate. He was responsible for redrafting the racing rules and revising the weight-for-age scale. In 1879 the first Monsoon Meeting was held on a specially constructed course inside the main flat course. In 1880 public interest in racing grew when races started to be held in the afternoons, and new stands were built.[3]
The Calcutta Turf Club came to have the same authority as the Jockey Club in England, the arbiter on matters concerning the rules of racing.[7] Thus a notice for a January 1863 race meeting at Muzaffarpur showed it was run under Calcutta Turf Club rules.[8] In 1883 the British House of Lords discussed a case in which Surgeon-Major Thornburn had been accused by the Lucknow Race Course of causing a pony to be pulled, and the Calcutta Turf Club upheld that decision.[7] A court of inquiry looked into the matter, and the Commander-in-Chief of India held that the evidence confirmed the decision of the Calcutta racing club.[7] Thorburn was refused a court martial and was forced to return to England and to retire.[9] By 1899 the Calcutta Turf Club was the authority for rules at all of the 52 courses in the subcontinent and Burma apart from Bombay, PuneKarachi and Kolhapur, which were under the jurisdiction of Bombay.[3]
Royal Calcutta Turf Club Race Stands on Viceroy's Cup Day, c. 1910
In the 1880s the Calcutta Turf Club held polo matches, open to both Indians and Europeans.[10] The club continues to hold polo matches on the grounds in the middle of the racecourse.[11] From 1886 to 1897 Sir William McPherson headed the racing organization. He upgraded the rules of racing. He also struck an agreement with the Bombay Turf Authorities under which any course in India that held races under the rules had to submit to the authority of Calcutta or Bombay. Sir William introduced various other changes. Jockeys could not bet and professional handicappers were introduced.[3] Steeplechasing was brought under the jurisdiction of the Calcutta Turf Club in 1888. The first Grand National in India was run in 1895 at the course at Tollygunge. Steeplechasing was one of the main events in the racing season.[12]
Lord William Beresford, a member of the viceroy's staff, won the Viceroy's cup in 1881 with Camballo, his black gelding. He later won it three more times on Myall King.[1] Apcar Alexander Apcar, a wealthy merchant whose family owned theApcar Line of steamers, owned a stud of Australian race horses. For some time he was president of the Calcutta Turf Club.[13] Apcar was a great rival of Beresford, who strongly believed in the merits of English thoroughbreds. Apcar's Great Scott won the Viceroy's cup three times, as did his Mayfowl.[14]
When Christmas race week opened, an important social event, the Viceroy of India and his wife would drive in state past the grandstand.[15] In 1905 the Prince of Wales, the future King George V, attended the races. In 1908 the Maharaja ofBurdwanDhiraja Sri Bejoy Chand Mahtab, was the first Indian elected as a full member of the club.[3]
Apcar Alexander Apcar played a large role in having a new grandstand erected at the club's racecourse, modeled on theLongchamp Racecourse grandstand.[13] The stands were built between 1905 and 1907, and stand membership was opened to the public. In 1910 the current Monsoon track was added, designed to drain extremely quickly. The club added "Royal" to its name in 1912 after King George V visited the races for the second time.[3] In the early 20th century the Calcutta Turf Club held races on twenty eight days each year.[16]

Later years[edit]

Stands at the former race course in Barrackpore, to the north of Calcutta.
Barrackpore course in 2012
In 1915 the Tollygunge course was closed and steeplechases were ran at the Maidan course.[12] In the early 1920s the RCTC became concerned about the lease of the course at Maidan and looked around for an alternative. An obvious choice would be to expand the existing Tollygunge course, but once the possibility became known the price of adjacent land became exorbitant. In 1922 a site to the north in Barrackpore, which included a race course, became available at an acceptable price. The RCTC decided to build a modern facility with new stands, stables and two courses, one round and one with six straight furlongs. The large grand stand would at first be partitioned between members and the public, and if the course was successful a separate members-only grand stand would be built. The railway agreed to provide a spur line to the course that could carry both horses and spectators. The new facility was inaugurated on 27 January 1928.[17]
Grand Nationals continued to be run at the Maidan course until 1929, when the Grand National was transferred to Lahore, where it was held until 1938.[12] In the period before World War II (1939–1945) the club looked to Australia for guidance rather than to England. Thus the Australian Harvey Roulston was hired as an administrator, the Australian "Gray" gate was used in place of English starting gates, Australian jockeys such as Edgar Britt moved to Calcutta to ride forSayajirao Gaekwad III, the Maharaja of Baroda State and Australian horses were imported.[18] Methods of detecting drugs such as benzedrine from urine or blood samples became available in the 1930s. The rules of the Turf Club were updated to insist that these test be conducted meticulously to detect cheating, years before such tests were introduced by the English Jockey Club.[19]
Despite the fact that the Barrackpore course was technically superior to the Maidan course in many ways, it did not attract the public and consistently lost money. Races were held until 1941, when the army requisitioned it during World War II(1939–1945). After the war the course was rehabilitated, and races were run in 1947 and 1948. After that, the Barrackpore course was closed. In 1954 it was sold to the government in an arrangement that included renewal of the lease of the Maidan course.[17]
Sir Uday Chand Mahtab became a Steward in 1947. In 1955 he was elected as Senior Steward, a position he held for twenty seven years.[3] During his tenure, in the early 1950s the South India Turf Club was split off from the Royal Calcutta Turf Club to oversee racing at BangaloreChennai (Madras), HyderabadMysore and Ooty. The South India Turf Club in turn divided into separate authorities based on Madras, Bangalore and Hyderabad. In the 1970s these clubs and the original Calcutta and Bombay clubs joined in a loose association of Indian turf authorities.[1]
In February 1961 Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip visited the course and presented the trophy to the winner.[20]Attendance by the elite at the races was an important social event even in the 1960s, where the women would wear their most glamorous clothes.[21] In 1971 Geoffrey Moorhouse placed the Royal Calcutta Turf Club in the first rank of clubs in the city, along with the Bengal Club, the Tollygunge Club and the Calcutta Club.[22]

Gambling[edit]

1934 10-rupee Calcutta Derby Sweepstake ticket
The Calcutta Turf Club imported English practices of gambling on races, named the Derby and the St Leger after the English equivalents. The club was organized in 1847 in part to regulate such gambling. A mildly disapproving account from 1866 described the betting practices, which it called "lotteries".[23] In the early days of horse racing in India betting was through a combination of a lottery and an auction. Typically 100 ten-rupee tickets were sold, with the money placed in a pot. A ticket was drawn for each horse in the race. These tickets were auctioned, with the ticket holder getting half the price of the winning bid and the other half going in the pot. Following the race the pot was divided among the holders of tickets for the winning horses.[24][a]
Parimutuel betting began in 1872.[3]
The Calcutta Turf Club Derby draw was started as a private sweepstake in 1887 by Lord William Beresford.[28] Just afterWorld War I (1914–1918) the sweepstake gave prizes of £75,000, £35,000 and £15,000 for the top three horses in the club's Derby.[29] The Calcutta Derby Sweepstake became famous worldwide, with the pool reaching almost £1,000,000 sterling in 1929 and 1930.[24] 40% of the total pool went to the first prize winner, 20% to the second and 10% to the third. Tickets for unplaced horses also received a share, while the club kept only 10%.[24][b] The sweep was open only to members of the RCTC, or to friends who could ask members to place a wager. Clumsy methods were developed to make it easier for punters in other countries to place bets, but the Calcutta Derby Sweepstake could not compete with the Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake, introduced in the 1930s, despite the expected pay-out being considerably higher.[24]

Today[edit]

Victoria Memorial, in grounds separated from the racecourse by Hospital road
The Calcutta Turf Club is now housed in the former home of the Apcar family, a two-story Palladian-style building dating to the early 19th century and maintained in perfect condition. The building has a portico on the north side and a veranda on the south. The floors of the ground level are marble, and the doors made of teak. The vestibule is two stories high, with an elegantly carved wooden staircase leading to the upper floor where the family had their private rooms.[34] The building is at 11 Russell Street.[35] With comfortable leather sofas and armchairs, it is an oasis of calm.[36]
The race course today has three viewing stands. The main pavilion has three tiers, with elaborate turrets and railings of wrought iron. Across the grounds from the stand, to the east of the race course, is the Victoria Memorial, a marble monument to Queen Victoria. The stand is now open to all members of the public.[4] The public can buy tickets to see the races. Races are run on Saturdays most of the year. The Monsoon meet from July to October is followed by the Cold Weather Meet from November to April.[37]

References[edit]

Notes
  1. Jump up^ Calcutta auction is an American term that is said to be named after the auctions of the Royal Calcutta Turf Club.[25] It is a form of betting in which the competitors in a tournament are auctioned off to bidders in a pool. The "owners" of the winning team split their portion of the pool with the players. Golfing Calcuttas were often rigged, with golfers faking their handicaps or accepting bribes to lose.[26] As the result of a fake handicap scandal in a Calcutta at Deepdale Golf Club, in 1955 the United States Golf Association formally outlawed Calcuttas.[27]
  2. Jump up^ In 1929 London's Stock Exchange Derby Sweepstake had a fund of £5 million, and paid two first prizes of £625,000 each. In 1930 this sweep was scaled back to 100,000 tickets of £1 sterling each. According to the New York Sun, this made the Calcutta Derby Sweep once again the largest in the world, with a total fund that normally exceeded £4 million.[30] [The New York Sunmay have confused pounds sterling with rupees, worth less than 10% of a pound.] The winning ticket in 1929 paid out Rs 1,600,000, or 40% of an Rs 4 million pool.[31] In 1929 the second prize of ₤62,000 was won by a South African.[32] The winning ticket in 1930 was RR-2859. Seven working men in Barnstaple, England had clubbed together to buy the ticket, and then sold a half share before the race. The men won £62,486.[33]
Citations

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