Yesterday, Mumbai’s racing season got off to a start with the dust of hooves at the Royal Western India Turf Club’s (RWITC) headquarters, the Mahalaxmi racecourse. From today, it will be 43 days of racing spread across a little over five months.

The chairman of the RWITC, Zaravary Poonawalla, and the committee held a curtain-raiser conference about the Mumbai season on Wednesday evening. One point they repeatedly stressed is that the season is a seminal one for Mumbai, given that the Asian Racing Conference (ARC) is taking place in January 2016, when racing officials and honchos from across the world will congregate in Mumbai for debate and discussion on the sport, exchange ideas and talk about its future. Many racing centres are battling the challenge of dwindling attendance at the racecourse, and this is a problem that needs to be addressed at some length.