An­dre E Bap­tiste

The Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) and rac­ing au­thor­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go are look­ing to pull out all of the stops in an ef­fort to re­vi­talise the sport in this coun­try and one has to say, full cred­it to them. How­ev­er that be­ing the case, there is one very big stop that they need to pull out and that is Sun­day rac­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Yes peo­ple, horse rac­ing on a Sun­day. This is not a nov­el sug­ges­tion but it is time for Trinidad and To­ba­go to come out of the Vic­to­ri­an Age. This con­cept is not quixot­ic. The most com­mon­ly used ar­gu­ment against Sun­day rac­ing is the re­li­gious one. Trinidad and To­ba­go is viewed by some as a Chris­t­ian coun­try and there­fore rac­ing and gam­bling, should not be en­cour­aged on a Sun­day. This ar­gu­ment, even if valid at some point in the past, is un­doubt­ed­ly spu­ri­ous at present. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, there is not one ma­jor coun­try, Chris­t­ian or oth­er­wise, that does not per­mit rac­ing and gam­bling on a Sun­day. Italy (home of the Vat­i­can), the Unit­ed King­dom, Spain, Ger­many, the Unit­ed States, Japan, In­dia, Aus­tralia, and Puer­to Ri­co, Cana­da -you name it, vir­tu­al­ly every coun­try in the world per­mits rac­ing on a Sun­day.

The no­table ex­cep­tions to this list are the coun­tries in the Caribbean. As with most oth­er things, our ini­tial re­sis­tance was based on Eng­lish norms and prac­tices but while they have since moved for­ward with mod­ernising their reg­u­la­tions, we have not re­viewed or re­vised ours. Our laws re­main stuck in the mire of the past. Some of these same laws re­sult­ed in Sun­day shop­ping al­so be­ing re­strict­ed in this coun­try and it has been a wel­come re­lief for many, in­clud­ing many mer­chants, that grad­u­al­ly this is be­ing re­laxed. It be­gun with the gro­ceries be­ing al­lowed to open on Sat­ur­days, then the malls were al­lowed to open for Christ­mas (ini­tial­ly). Price smart was al­lowed to open on Sun­days and now the malls seem free to open if they so wish. All of these are pro­gres­sive signs as the coun­try recog­nis­es that, giv­en the fast pace of ac­tiv­i­ties and Sat­ur­days be­com­ing a reg­u­lar busy day for all, and a work­ing day for many busi­ness­es in a very com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment, Sun­days are in­creas­ing­ly the on­ly days that fam­i­lies and in­di­vid­u­als have avail­able to them for recre­ation and shop­ping.

I would like all of you to cur­rent­ly ex­am­ine your sched­ule on a Sun­day as com­pared to a Sat­ur­day and re­alise the amount of things that could get done if some of your Sat­ur­days are now free and the fact that your chil­dren and spouse can now at­tend horse rac­ing with you. Let us al­so not fool our­selves with re­spect to the preva­lence of gam­bling on a Sun­day. Horse rac­ing's share of the gam­bling mar­ket world­wide has di­min­ished to few­er than 25 per cent and has long been usurped by casi­no gam­bling and to some ex­tent, gam­bling on most oth­er ma­jor sports, main­ly over the In­ter­net. Many of these sports are broad­cast­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go year-round, in­clud­ing on Sun­days. And of course, most of the pri­vate mem­bers' club is al­lowed to open on a Sun­day and du­ly take ad­van­tage of this. The Ari­ma Race Club, for its part, has tak­en to broad­cast­ing North Amer­i­can races on Sun­days but ac­cept­ing bets (on se­lect races) be­fore hand to be in con­for­mi­ty with the laws of the land. This is an in­ter­est­ing mid­dle ground but, short of what­ev­er rev­enue it con­tributes to the cof­fers of the Club, and does noth­ing for the lo­cal in­dus­try. It al­most seems like tak­ing two steps for­ward and one step back­ward, with­out hav­ing to be both­ered about caus­ing any stir with those in au­thor­i­ty. It is a false sense of com­fort and reeks of weak lead­er­ship and er­rant think­ing, which has ex­ist­ed for far too long.

The ben­e­fits of rac­ing on a Sun­day can­not be overem­pha­sised. One on­ly has to look at the at­ten­dance on pub­lic hol­i­days when there are less com­pet­ing ac­tiv­i­ties (sport­ing or oth­er­wise) to ap­pre­ci­ate what could hap­pen on a Sun­day race­day. The at­trac­tion of horse rac­ing will be opened up to a brand new mar­ket. As a recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ty, horse rac­ing has few peers when it comes to short bursts of ex­cite­ment. The sport has the po­ten­tial to draw huge crowds once it does not com­pete with the many oth­er press­ing en­gage­ments on the av­er­age in­di­vid­ual's cal­en­dar. It is al­so re­lat­ed to the lo­ca­tion, as there would be few­er ex­cus­es for per­sons in terms of at­ten­dance on Sun­days as the high­ways are dra­mat­i­cal­ly less busy on Sun­day and many cur­rent Sun­day dri­ves could find a fin­ish­ing point at San­ta Rosa Park. Once the Gov­ern­ment agrees to re­lax the laws pro­hibit­ing horse rac­ing on a Sun­day, the Ari­ma Race Club will be able to sched­ule a Sun­day for races and no doubt this would be done on an ex­per­i­men­tal ba­sis in the first in­stant. \

Trinidad and To­ba­go does not yet have the rac­ing stock to fa­cil­i­tate rac­ing on back to back Sat­ur­days and Sun­days, so the Sun­day should re­place one of the orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled Sat­ur­days. I can en­vis­age the oc­ca­sion very clear­ly. The day can be pro­mot­ed as a fam­i­ly day with the in­field set up with fam­i­ly at­trac­tions along with bet­ting booths to ac­com­mo­date the par­ents. Ac­cess to the in­field can take place in much the same man­ner as ac­cess is cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ed at the start or in be­tween races. No ad­mis­sion would be charged, and if at all prac­ti­cal, peo­ple should be al­lowed to dri­ve their cars in­to that in­field. It would have to cross the turf track, but it is not un­com­mon to see such car cross­ings on in­ter­na­tion­al tracks. That way, fam­i­lies would be en­cour­aged to pic­nic in the in­field. The reg­u­lar pic­nic ar­eas ad­ja­cent to the Grand Stand would al­so be avail­able to fam­i­lies. We have to start think­ing long term about the vi­a­bil­i­ty of a sport that we love very much.

Races should have a sched­uled post time that is no ear­li­er than 1 pm and should con­clude no lat­er than 5.30pm. There should be loads of food ser­vice providers to give pa­trons a wide ar­ray of op­tions from the light fin­ger foods to heav­ier Sun­day meals. Re­mem­ber the fo­cus has to be on a fam­i­ly's day out. En­ter­tain­ment should be kept low-key to en­sure that the rac­ing re­mains the main fo­cus. The fi­nal in­gre­di­ent for a suc­cess­ful Sun­day (or any oth­er race day) would be im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed on the hors­es in each race. The ARC should en­gage the ser­vices of a pro­fes­sion­al race watch­er or gal­lops ex­pert who can pro­vide a sum­ma­ry of each horse's per­for­mance in the race in which they par­tic­i­pat­ed. This in­for­ma­tion can be post­ed on­line be­neath the horse's name in the re­sults page of the Web site. It can al­so be pub­lished around mid­week in one or all of the dai­ly news­pa­pers.

At the mo­ment, we need to pre­pare our­selves to be in­ven­tive and cre­ative and we need for some of the ma­jor stake­hold­ers like the own­ers and train­ers to give the ARC their sup­port by ac­tion and not on­ly words. Soon, we will have a new Arch­bish­op Fr Joseph Har­ris, and just as he may have sur­prised many with the Catholic Car­ni­val band, he can again think out of the box with the ad­vent of Sun­day rac­ing. The time is now. Let us give it our best com­bined ef­forts. Sun­day rac­ing is the fu­ture of the sport and will on­ly help in en­hanc­ing the liveli­hood of many in the sport and re­turn this glo­ri­ous sport to its right­ful place atop the heap.