LAHORE: The Lahore Winter Meeting scheduled to be held at the Racecourse here on Sunday has been cancelled, LRC secretary Shahzad Akhtar told Dawn on Saturday.

The cancellation of races for the second straight week has been necessitated in view of a renewed surge in the cases of pandemic. Two important cup races were on the nine-event card to be staged on Sunday — Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup and Malik Ghulam Nabi Memorial Cup.

Meanwhile, the horse-racing and breeding fraternity in Lahore has condoled the death of renowned international patron of thoroughbred and Arabian horse racing, Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who died this week.

At a meeting LRC steward, Mahmood Khan, while paying tributes to the late champion owner-breeder, said racing have been an abiding passion of the sheikh, who patronized it across the racing world throughout his life.

Mahmood recalled that Sheikh Hamdan had presented an electronic Starting Gate to the LRC in 2002, He later visited the club in January 2003 and was the chief guest at a special race meeting held in his honour at the Racecourse here. He personally gave away the cups named after him to winning owners, Munir Ahmed Dar and Shafiq Sadiq flanked by the then Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, LRC chairman Tariq Aziz and secretary Ata Ali Khan.

His visit was instrumental to give a great boost to imported thoroughbred racing that had picked up a great momentum which continued for over a decade and imported thoroughbreds owned by Syed Pervez Hussain and Syed Tasvir Hussain still remind those days setting up fastest timing record in different distance races not bettered even this day.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2021