Kelvin 'N'

Tur­fites, ar­dent race fans and rac­ing en­thu­si­asts are hap­py to hear that Caribbean Na­tions Rac­ing Chal­lenge will be held in T&T on De­cem­ber 3.The day is be­ing hailed as the great­est sin­gle day in the his­to­ry of the sport in the Caribbean with hors­es from Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, St Kitts and of course the host, do­ing bat­tle in ten races for to­tal prize-mon­ey of US$650,000.Over the past decade, the rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty was not hap­py with what tran­spired with lo­cal rac­ing and look to chair­man of the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), Derek Chin and the chair­men of the oth­er rac­ing bod­ies to move the Sport of Kings back to the top.The rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty will be hap­py to note that the Chal­lenge is the first ven­ture on the path of change for horse rac­ing in this coun­try.

Chin stat­ed when he as­sumed of­fice, that rac­ing can be made great once again. He lost lit­tle time in bring­ing for­ward his plan of du­pli­cat­ing the Breed­er's Cup pro­gramme.De­spite hav­ing three dif­fer­ent au­thor­i­ties-Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB), Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) and TTRA-the in­dus­try hasn't proven to be a suc­cess.It has failed, mis­er­ably, in the last 10 years, so the one way to turn it around is with the help of a gov­ern­ment, who un­der­stands what needs to be done is to re­struc­ture, change it and cre­ate a new av­enue for rev­enue.As it now stands, the three bod­ies are work­ing har­mo­nious­ly for the bet­ter­ment of the Sport of Kings. They are work­ing to­geth­er with one pur­pose in mind, that is the mod­erni­sa­tion and up­lift­ment of the stan­dard of horse rac­ing.On this oc­ca­sion, they have part­nered with Christo­pher Ar­mond, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of Caribbean Rac­ing Pro­mo­tions Lim­it­ed, to en­sure the suc­cess of the first Caribbean Chal­lenge. This race day will see hors­es from the re­gion rac­ing for su­prema­cy and a to­tal purse of US$650,000.

In 1998, T&T host­ed the Cla­si­co Del Caribe and we had a great turnout at the cen­tralised venue, San­ta Rosa Park in Ari­ma.This year's Chal­lenge is ex­pect­ed to be of a greater mag­ni­tude and will show­case our coun­try to the world.Many of you may not have been around when the leg­endary Lester Pig­gott came to our coun­try and rode Ho­va to vic­to­ry for Daniel Bar­ton at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain. That day, there was very lit­tle room for any­one, such was the large turnout at the Big Yard.Some may have seen Willie Car­son when he won at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah some year's lat­er. The sa­van­nah over­flowed with tur­fites and spec­ta­tors.The Chal­lenge is ex­pect­ed to eclipse them all, such is the mag­ni­tude of the De­cem­ber 3 af­fair.Big days bring out the top rid­ers and train­ers and the world lead­ing jock­ey, Lan­fran­co Det­tori was ex­pect­ed to ride in our beloved coun­try but he will not be here.

Horse rac­ing fans will get the gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to see Julien Lep­aroux, one the lead­ing jock­eys in the US in ac­tion; along with one of Britain's top rid­ers Richard Hugh­es, Allen Maragh and Ra­jiv Maragh, both based in the US.Char­i­ty be­gins at home and our most ac­com­plished jock­ey Emile Ram­sam­my will be re­turn­ing to ply his trade and to be ho­n­oured for his con­tri­bu­tion to rac­ing.With sev­en weeks left be­fore the biggest day in rac­ing in our coun­try's his­to­ry, every­one should be mark­ing the cal­en­dar and mak­ing plans to be at San­ta Rosa Park.Chin ex­pects sev­er­al oth­er stars to sign on in the next few weeks but point­ed out that Det­tori, ar­guably the most pop­u­lar rid­er in the world, will not be among them as the Ital­ian is com­mit­ted to ride in Macau on the day.Tele­vi­sion and Games (TVG) Net­work of Neva­da, USA will be here to cov­er the day's rac­ing to a pro­ject­ed huge world­wide view­ing. I will not miss it. It is worth trav­el­ling miles to view a fan­tas­tic day at the races.