Kelvin Nan­coo

Con­grat­u­la­tions have been pour­ing in for Derek Chin and his or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful stag­ing of the Caribbean Na­tions Rac­ing Chal­lenge-the re­gion­al equiv­a­lent of the North Amer­i­ca Breed­er's Cup-which was held last Sat­ur­day at San­ta Rosa Park, Ari­ma. Chin, chair­man of the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), promised when he as­sumed of­fice that rac­ing will be great once again. He lost lit­tle time in bring­ing for­ward his plan of du­pli­cat­ing the Breed­er's Cup. TVG-a wa­ger­ing Web site and horse-rac­ing net­work in the Unit­ed States, with more than 150 tracks world­wide, was im­pressed by the fa­cil­i­ties and the pro­fes­sion­al­ism with which the day was man­aged. De­spite the weath­er, bets to­talling close to $3 mil­lion went through the Am­Tote-Amer­i­can To­talis­er Com­pa­ny-ma­chines.

Some 400 mil­lion view­ers glob­al­ly had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to wit­ness the event.

We have to tip our hats to the group of the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty, (TTRA) chair­man Derek Chin, Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) pres­i­dent Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo, and chair­man of the Bet­ting Levy Board Ka­ma Ma­haraj, and Christo­pher Ar­mond. The new faces of the horse-rac­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion have tak­en shape and there can be lit­tle doubt that ex­pec­ta­tions are even high­er. There is now a glow at the end of the tun­nel for a sport that has been go­ing nowhere in the past six years and this is the in­jec­tion which was need­ed with the in­dus­try, prob­a­bly at its most crit­i­cal junc­ture. Last Sat­ur­day, the world saw that good rac­ing ex­ists in these parts. A proud Chin said the Chal­lenge went off re­al­ly well de­spite the weath­er. "The Kit­ti­tians beat us but it makes us look at our rac­ing prod­ucts. Clear­ly, we need to buy bet­ter through­breds if we have to beat Arthur Sharpe. We need bet­ter qual­i­ty hors­es to en­hance our rac­ing. Own­ers must go out and buy bet­ter blood­stock. We need to boost our stud farms to be able to com­pete with our Caribbean neigh­bours."

Chin not­ed that the top jock­eys were hap­py with the fa­cil­i­ty and the man­ner in which they were treat­ed. "In fact Corey Nakatani told me that the track is a very good track and is fair. He said that the track was not dan­ger­ous and that he will ad­vise jock­eys in the Unit­ed States to come to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Nakatani said he was pleased with his wel­come and the man­ner in which he was treat­ed. He is look­ing for­ward to re­turn­ing." Chin re­vealed that pun­ters were al­so pleased by what they saw of the pa­rade and walk­ing ring, along with the sad­dling en­clo­sure. Chin's on­ly dis­ap­point­ment was the fail­ure of Ja­maica to be ful­ly rep­re­sent­ed. "But from what they saw, they will be com­ing in full force next year. Those who missed Sat­ur­day have said they re­alised they missed a great op­por­tu­ni­ty. Some of my Bar­ba­di­an friends who did not bring their hors­es have seen what we can do and have pledged their sup­port for the 2013 Caribbean Na­tions Rac­ing Chal­lenge. The Kit­ti­tians had a great day and will be stay­ing un­til Jan­u­ary. That is good for our rac­ing be­cause we will have to do bet­ter if we have to turn back the Sharpe's." Chin said the Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty, the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) and the Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB), now had to work har­mo­nious­ly for the bet­ter­ment of rac­ing. All tur­fites were proud of the im­prove­ment at the fa­cil­i­ty. Based pure­ly on the time and re­sources, what we did made T&T proud."