Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is look­ing to mon­e­tise goat rac­ing on the is­land by le­gal­is­ing bet­ting on the sport.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the 51st an­nu­al Carn­bee/Mt Pleas­ant Sports and Fam­i­ly Day on Mon­day, Sec­re­tary of Sport Keigon De­noon said talks are un­der­way about of­fi­cial­ly recog­nis­ing goat rac­ing as a sport.

De­noon, the elec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant, said he was de­light­ed to see the ac­tion at the Mt Pleas­ant Recre­ation Ground.

“I’ve seen some goats and jock­eys com­ing down the track fierce­ly. The com­pe­ti­tion is stiff,” he said.

The Sports and Fam­i­ly Day fea­tured events for every­one with 100m sprints in var­i­ous age groups, an East­er bon­net pa­rade, a boun­cy cas­tle, goat rac­ing and an af­ter-par­ty.

An un­spo­ken but seem­ing­ly ac­cept­ed el­e­ment of the goat rac­ing is the il­le­gal bet­ting that al­so takes place around the races.

De­noon said steps are be­ing tak­en to for­malise the sport, which he be­lieves could be a mil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try.

“I lit­er­al­ly sat a mo­ment ago and spoke with my sports di­rec­tor about how we can of­fi­cial­ly recog­nise goat rac­ing as a sport. That is the tra­jec­to­ry we are go­ing,” he said.

“That is gonna take some build­ing out in terms of meet­ing with the Goat Rac­ing As­so­ci­a­tion and en­sur­ing they are pre­pared for that step where we are go­ing.”

Asked why it took so long to for­mal­ly recog­nise the sport, which has been in ex­is­tence for near­ly a cen­tu­ry, De­noon said, “It took us so many years to of­fi­cial­ly recog­nise the steel­pan... Goat rac­ing is a sta­ple on the is­land. It is one of the old­est sport­ing things in terms of fes­ti­vals on the is­land. It is not some­thing to shun, but it is some­thing to be proud of, es­pe­cial­ly as it is some­thing done by the com­mu­ni­ty and not nec­es­sar­i­ly the gov­ern­ment, but gov­ern­ment-sup­port­ed.”

De­noon said his di­vi­sion is keen on host­ing goat rac­ing events more fre­quent­ly in an at­tempt to mon­e­tise the sport.

In 2025, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine called for goat rac­ing to be held through­out the year.

“Quite soon we will be in con­ver­sa­tions with NL­CB (Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board) to un­roll that prod­uct so goat rac­ing not on­ly de­vel­ops but ex­pands so much that per­sons from all around the world will not on­ly come for the sport but the bet­ting as­pect.”

De­noon be­lieves that once man­aged and mar­ket­ed prop­er­ly, goat rac­ing can eclipse the pop­u­lar­i­ty of horse rac­ing lo­cal­ly.

“It can not on­ly ri­val but sur­pass (horse rac­ing). This is a nov­el­ty event that you can on­ly find in cer­tain parts of the world. If you look up goat rac­ing, the first thing that comes up is Buc­coo and Mt Pleas­ant.”

Mean­while, first-time vis­i­tor James Urch, who works for a horse rac­ing bet­ting com­pa­ny in the UK, be­lieves goat rac­ing has tremen­dous po­ten­tial glob­al­ly.

Urch and his friends came to To­ba­go specif­i­cal­ly for East­er to en­joy goat rac­ing.

He said the com­pa­ny he works for man­ages bet­ting for the ma­jor races in Britain, in­clud­ing the Roy­al As­cot and Grand Na­tion­al.

Urch said, “Goat rac­ing should be a thing all over the world. It is one of the best sports I have ever watched. It is so ex­cit­ing. You should be able to gam­ble on it.”

He be­lieves goat rac­ing would be ex­treme­ly pop­u­lar among pun­ters if it is repli­cat­ed in Eng­land.