There is no doubt that cricket is king in India. Then there is football. And hockey. Tennis, badminton and boxing follow suit, and now there’s even a kabbadi league. Finally, at the far end of the spectrum is motorsports, with people like Narain Karthikeyan and Gaurav Gill keeping the flag flying.
But when you go from four wheels to two, the closet gets even barer. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Back in Mumbai, one man is hopeful that in the future, there will be an Indian rider in MotoGP. The man is 33-year-old Mudassar Khatri. Mudassar has been a regular on the track, participating in rallies and motocross events since his youth. Now he owns the Kawasaki Palm Beach dealership, so you could say that motorcycles and motorsports is something ingrained in his DNA.
Yet, this story is not about Mudassar, but rather, about Mohammed Raheesh Khatri. He is six years old, rides a Yamaha PW 80 and wants to be a MotoGP rider. He recently gained the distinction of being the youngest drag racer in the world when he went out with the big boys for the Valley Run 2015 in Aamby Valley. He is also the son of Mudassar Khatri.
Raheesh has come straight from school to the I-Land Racing Academy motocross track in Wadala, Mumbai. He looks and acts like any other school kid in his uniform, with his heavy bag of books. That is till the moment his Yamaha PW 80 is unloaded from the back of the Innova that has ferried him here.
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