An­dre E Bap­tiste

?Horse rac­ing is at a cross­roads in T&T. Where the for­mer Sport of Kings fi­nal­ly ends up will de­pend as much on the char­ac­ter of those in­volved in the sport as it de­pends on the eco­nom­ic for­tunes of the coun­try.

In 2006 and 2007, the sport was boom­ing. New spon­sors had come in­to the sport, more and more for­eign hors­es were be­ing ac­quired and purs­es were be­ing in­creased. What went wrong? The sim­ple an­swer is the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis but this would be disin­gen­u­ous to say the least.

The re­al an­swer lies in the fact that those in­volved in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport be­gan to be­lieve its his­tor­i­cal so­bri­quet. They be­gan to be­lieve that they were kings, above re­proach, in­fal­li­ble and con­temp­tu­ous.

Spon­sors were made to be­lieve that they were be­ing done favours; own­ers' in­ter­ests were not pur­sued when race fram­ing de­ci­sions were be­ing made.

Train­ers were treat­ed like em­ploy­ees; there was no con­cern for the well be­ing and liveli­hood of the jock­eys and grooms. The bet­ting pub­lic were viewed as brain­less gam­bling ad­dicts who would bet on any race shown whether it orig­i­nat­ed at Bel­mont Park or Beu­lah Park. The loss of the Eng­lish rac­ing, has cer­tain­ly af­fect­ed the in­ter­est. But per­haps it is a case of per­sons in au­thor­i­ty not will­ing to lis­ten and learn from the er­rors of the past, as they are re­peat­ed day in, day out with­out any com­pas­sion or thought for oth­ers. Peo­ple will on­ly tol­er­ate so much for so long.

It is a well-known say­ing that "self-re­spect is not a mat­ter of what you are do­ing in your life, but rather of how you are do­ing it." And this is where those charged with ad­min­is­ter­ing the sport need to be­gin their in­tro­spec­tion. Among the sim­ple ques­tions that they should be ask­ing them­selves are the fol­low­ing: Do own­ers want more or less races on a race day?

What does horse rac­ing of­fer to a spon­sor that is unique? Why do most of the "bet­ter" jock­eys and grooms seek to ply their skill over­seas at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty? Why are the stud farms in Trinidad and To­ba­go slow­ly be­ing con­vert­ed in­to re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ments even as the horse rac­ing pop­u­la­tion grows? Do pun­ters pre­fer many low grade for­eign races be­ing run off al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly or less bet­ter grade races ap­pro­pri­ate­ly spaced out?

What types/lev­els of med­ica­tion are in the best in­ter­est of the horse? Why are there so few pro­fes­sion­al ad­min­is­tra­tors in the sport in Trinidad and To­ba­go? What is be­ing done to im­prove the stan­dard of liv­ing not on­ly of the horse pop­u­la­tion but al­so the grooms?

If the ad­min­is­tra­tors can hon­est­ly an­swer those ques­tions, we will be on the road to a re­vival of the sport in the coun­try. There is no room for ar­ro­gance and am­biva­lence in a ser­vice in­dus­try–and that is what the sport of horse rac­ing is, a ser­vice. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are too many per­sons who cur­rent­ly be­lieve that horse rac­ing is their own fief­dom and there­fore seek on­ly to di­vide and rule and there­by con­quer. It is a pol­i­tick­ing trick, which has out­grown its use­ful life in the re­al busi­ness world.

Trin­bag­on­ian race­hors­es are not bred for en­durance; they are a very slow de­vel­op­ing breed with frail bone struc­tures and sta­mi­na lim­i­ta­tions (due to lim­it­ed acreage for growth and poor feed­ing habits). Very few lo­cal­ly bred hors­es make it to the race course be­fore they are of­fi­cial­ly three years old. While the clas­sic sea­son has been pushed back to lat­er in the three-year old sea­son, pos­si­bly in recog­ni­tion of this fact, shouldn't we be ask­ing our­selves whether our clas­sic dis­tances al­so need to be re­viewed?

This coun­try has mir­rored its clas­sics along the lines of the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, but does this re­main rel­e­vant giv­en the Trin­ba­go breed? In the UK, it is a fair­ly well-es­tab­lished fact that if your race­horse does not make it to the course dur­ing its two-year-old sea­son, its chances of be­ing a clas­sic con­tender are con­sid­er­ably re­duced. With this in mind, an ob­vi­ous ques­tion is, Should our clas­sics be run over 1200, 1400 and 1750 me­tres rather than 1800, 1900 and 2000 me­tres? These and many oth­ers are ques­tions that must be asked and an­swered and in the 21st cen­tu­ry that we find our­selves there sure­ly can no longer be any "sa­cred cows."

It is time for ac­tion, be­fore it is too late for the sport of horse rac­ing! We need some savvy in­ter­ven­tion, I can sug­gest many per­sons with the ex­per­tise to al­low horse rac­ing to grow, but these per­sons will not want to get in­volved in any or­gan­i­sa­tion that has per­son­al­i­ty is­sues. That may be a mat­ter for the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty and the Bet­ting Levy Board.