Royal Western India Turf Club
horse racing club in India
Royal Western India Turf Club Ltd. (RWITC) is an exclusive Indian sports club for horse racing, established in 1800. Which runs the Mahalaxmi Racecourse in Mumbai and the Pune Race Course.
History
The Royal Western India Turf Club has a history spanning just over two centuries. It conducts racing at Mumbai's Mahalaxmi Racecourse (from November to April), including the Indian Derby in February and Pune (from July to October), while Delhi races under its Rules.
Its first meeting was held 10–11 January 1798, with two plates run in heats. Breakfast was served on the high grounds opposite Colonel Jones’ house and Captain G. Hall saluted the last race with fifteen guns.
Captain G. Hall, Sir Charles Forbes, A. Campbell, P. Hadow and others formed the Bombay Turf Club in 1802 and they acquired land in Byculla to conduct racing; the balcony of the clubhouse was used as a private stand for the Members. Shortly thereafter the name was changed to the Western India Turf Club.
For the major part of the nineteenth century, racing continued to be held at Byculla until in 1883 the venue was shifted to Mahalakshmi on land made available by Sir C N Wadia.
“Royal Western India Turf Club” enters the record as horse racing club in India. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Royal, Western and India can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7375010. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1800, 1798, 1802 and 1883.
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This entry incorporates text from “Royal Western India Turf Club” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.