Indian lady jockey wins World Championship

MUMBAI: Racing thoroughbred horses is not a profession a 13-year-old girl usually dreams of, especially in India. In that sense, Rupa Narpat Singh has been special as she got all the encouragement from her family when she took up professional racing in 2002 as a 19-year-old.

Hailing from a family with deep roots in horse racing, Rupa rode into history books by galloping to victory in the Ladies World Championship at Sluzewich Race Course in Warsaw, Poland.

The HH Shaikha Fatima Bint Mubarak Ladies World Championship was part of the Shaikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Global Arabian Flat Racing Festival and involved 10 woman jockeys from across the world.

Rupa, whose grandfather Ugam Singh and father Narpat Singh were trainers while brother Ravinder is a

RUPA IS THE BEST WOMAN JOCKEY IN THE COUNTRY AND WON THE OOTY 1000 GUINEAS IN 2010.

jockey in Hyderabad, is the best and most experienced woman jockey in the country and had won the Ooty 1000 Guineas in 2010.

Rupa, who wears the famous Gold and Brown silks of MAM Ramaswamy and races regularly in Chennai and Ooty, showed her class in the race in rainy conditions.

“What helped Rupa was her light weight (48 kg) and her experience,” said Andrezej Wojtowicz, who trained Nicolas, the horse Rupa rode on Sunday.

Rupa obviously was elated. “I smell horses and horses smell me. It is great to be in Poland,” she said. The 32-yearold from Chennai has till now won more than 500 races in 3000 outings.