An­dre Bap­tiste

To­day we con­clude our three-part se­ries with Derek Chin, new chair­man of the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty. This in­ter­view was con­duct­ed by An­dre Bap­tiste.

Q: Tell us about the re­ac­tion to your ap­point­ment.

DC: I am quite tak­en aback. As you said in the past I've been a bit of a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure be­cause of my out­spo­ken­ness. I stand for fair­ness. I en­joy the sport which is some­thing I want to see up to world class. I'm hop­ing to see peo­ple look­ing at rac­ing and think­ing it's the great­est thing out. We have is­sues where when you trav­el, you tell peo­ple you are from Trinidad and you have a horse run­ning in the Der­by and they say do what? We need to take it and build it and be able to say my horse won the Der­by and every­body say, re­al­ly that must be a good horse.

Q: You seem so pos­i­tive, de­spite all that is go­ing on in the sport?

DC: On Sun­day, the Train­ing As­so­ci­a­tion had a re­cep­tion for me. I had to change my break­fast, it was salt fish and bake, and it was tasty. They ex­tend­ed their sup­port and the press and peo­ple are call­ing, I am hop­ing it is gen­uine. I must say the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz and his Gov­ern­ment want to see rac­ing. I told the Prime Min­is­ter and she said for sure, so I am look­ing for­ward to that day when she will at­tend rac­ing. In 2012, I'm go­ing back to the blue print of the Breed­ers Cup, where we can have Mar­tinique, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and Trinidad to show off their hors­es, and com­pete on a day with five one hun­dred thou­sand US dol­lars races. I think we can use that as a goal and bring back in­ter is­land ri­val­ry. It's a chal­lenge, I am re­al­ly pick­ing up a lot of pieces, a lot of peo­ple are say­ing this is their last year and once their horse is fin­ished, they are out of the game. It is go­ing to take a lot to keep them in the sport.

Q: Why are the Ja­maican bred hors­es ex­celling faster than our hors­es?

DC: Well the whole dif­fer­ence comes down to the Ja­maican en­vi­ron­ment for breed­ing, it is much bet­ter. They have a lot more land but al­so have a lot more horse­men. Cen­tres must be in place to help the Trinidad breed­er, but at the same time, not give it away. The breed­ers must start to put the sys­tems and nu­tri­tion­al pro­grammes to­geth­er, even though we have the prob­lems with the pas­tures in terms of the land size. We used to breed good enough hors­es to com­pete. We need to help breed­ers out, yes, pro­vide the in­cen­tives but not give it away, they must al­so be able to breed com­pet­i­tive hors­es, I still think by hav­ing com­pe­ti­tion like hav­ing Ja­maican breds com­ing in is healthy, so we must be care­ful to bal­ance it. Yes, in­cen­tives must be pro­vid­ed for lo­cal hors­es to give them a chance, but not to the point where they keep all for them­selves.

Q: So you are not in agree­ment with those who wish to place ob­sta­cles in pur­chas­ing Ja­maican hors­es?

DC: Well these are things we need to sort out. The Ja­maicans do it so they do give us not nec­es­sary their best hors­es, but of course their sec­onds. That is much bet­ter than our first, but we need to cre­ate a vi­able mar­ket, a mar­ket that has sup­ply and de­mand, right now the sup­ply and de­mand is bad, so we need to have the breed­ers come to­geth­er, come up with rec­om­men­da­tions, sit down and look at them to see what we can do to bal­ance it off and again not de­prive an own­er who wants to buy what he thinks is a bet­ter horse from Ja­maica that op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Q: Among the headaches be­ing faced is the qual­i­ty of jock­eys. How will you deal with this?

DC: The symp­tom of an in­dus­try that is on a de­cline al­lows peo­ple that are in the sport - the jock­eys for ex­am­ple, to look for green­er pas­tures. So you have seen a cou­ple of them go­ing over­seas. Some have been lucky enough to get in­to good sta­bles and have re­mained there. A lot of them have come back though. The jock­ey colony has cer­tain­ly de­plet­ed in terms of qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty. There was a time when we were sup­posed to have the jock­ey school. I've been try­ing to talk to Ed­mund De Fre­itas to see whether he is in­ter­est­ed in al­low­ing the Au­thor­i­ty to do some­thing with his farm be­cause he has bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties than what has been giv­en to Ray­mond La Guerre and Venice Richards to help the ap­pren­tices to train prop­er­ly. At one time, there was Tom­my Carter, now you have no one at that lev­el to re­al­ly get the youth, the young boys who are in­ter­est­ed in­to a fresh­er en­vi­ron­ment.

Q: It is go­ing to be a chal­lenge, but you will need peo­ple to work with you to suc­ceed.

DC: Yes, I can­not do it on my own, so I am call­ing on all of those who care about horserac­ing to as­sist me. I be­lieve that to­geth­er we can cure a lot of the prob­lems in horserac­ing and make the sport that we all love, great again one day.