The outstation challengers do lend colour to the local racing but of late there have been one, too many. On Saturday, the opening day of the season. Witnessed three of them walking away with honours in the afternoon’s six-event card. The welcome doors need to be kept opened for the present, else one wants to see more cancellations, the kind that was witnessed on November 5, the advertised fixture for the start of the season that failed to see the daylight owing to paucity of entries.

Honours were, however, shared equally in the afternoon’s six-event card. Anastasia, for instance, was one of the three visiting winners who looked cut above the rest on his way to claiming the day’s feature, the 1,100m RWITC Cup. The victory is rarely measured by way of lengths or timing clocked or other common factors. The style, fitness, the weight carried are some of the special parameters to gauge their potentials. Full marks to Anastasia, trained by the young Deepesh Narredu and ridden by the talented Trevor Patel who made his task look simple on the 7/4 favourite. Anastasia, a front running type, was ridden well off the pace and yet scored by over two lengths from the lowly weighted Hidden Gold (Neeraj Rawal), with Trevor concealing plenty in the saddle.

The afternoon, otherwise, belonged trainer Patrick Quinn and his pet jockey Pradeep Chouhan. The two professionals scored a priced double through Compliance and Dream Chaser. The fearless trainer had narrowly missed the bus during the monsoon season, having been on the sidelines and braving inconveniences from within the circles, leave alone the financial problem for several months.

Anyway, Compliance, with blinkers on, won the 1,200m Ardelis Handicap easily from trainer Vijay Singh’s Beautiful (Hindu Singh) while rest of the field, headed by Salvador, was far behind. The first two named need to be watched when they run again.

The victory of Quinn’s 10/1 shot, Dream Chaser, was against the run of play after the dominance of four favourites early in the afternoon. In the 1,100m Abbeville Handicap, neither the course 12/10 favourite, Island Lass (Hindu) nor 4/1 shot, Daddy’s Dream (Vinay Jaiswal) looked to be comfortable in the company of the front running Bread N Butter (Md Islam). Dream Chaser, on the other hand, brought into the fray from the wrong-end of the field to chew them all. The winner may strike again over a slightly extended trip.

The two surnamed Doctors – Arti and Aashay – too had a profitable afternoon. Starting off with a quietly fancied Third Avenue, in the 1,600m Serendine Handicap, Arti’s Third Avenue did not display signs of rustiness while returning to the track almost after eight months and scored a decisive victory over Basharat and Galen (Hindu). Vijay Singh’s Galen, who was a handy second behind the long time leader, Livisilla (Ashhad Asbar), was sent into the lead but failed to hang on to it, once the late finishing Third Avenue and Basharat got their acts together,

The two odds on favourites –Harvestime (Y.S. Srinath) and Queenstown (Neeraj) – won their respective events the 1,600m Relevance Handicap and the 1,400m Sangfroid Handicap. It was a routine, run-of-the-mill victory for each of the two but neither of the two was an impressive winner, and certainly not Classic potentials.