WHERE have the years gone? In 2009 I travelled with a team put together by Irish Thoroughbred Marketing to India. My fellow visitors were Michael O’Hagan, Maurice Moloney, Joey Cullen, Hugo Merry and Rolline Kavanagh, now O’Callaghan. I have many happy memories of that time, meeting so many interesting people.

One person we did not meet was Shapoor Mistry, though we did visit his farm, one of the oldest and most storied in India. Manjri Stud Farm is in Pune and predates the involvement of Mistry, who was given it as a birthday present. I reported at the time that this was in 1980, which would have been for his 16th birthday. Perhaps the manager gave us the wrong year, and it is more likely to have been for his 21st in 1985. Other reports I have read say the Mistry family acquired it in the mid-eighties.