?Hugh Hen­der­son

Many ex­perts claim lo­cal horse rac­ing is in deep trou­ble and give sev­er­al rea­sons to jus­ti­fy their opin­ion, most re­cent­ly the an­nounce­ment that the pres­ti­gious Jet­sam Awards func­tion will be de­layed due an al­leged high pro­file dop­ing case.

I agree we are head­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion but we still have a short time to do what is nec­es­sary to save the in­dus­try. There are two key fac­tors that need ad­dress­ing im­me­di­ate­ly-at­tract­ing new own­ers, pos­si­bly through syn­di­cates and find­ing enough mon­ey to fund the in­dus­try ad­e­quate­ly-both are in­ter­de­pen­dent. If BLB col­lects enough tax­es to in­crease and sus­tain stakes mean­ing­ful­ly, new own­ers will ap­pear on the scene and dis­il­lu­sioned lo­cal breed­ers will keep their stud farms in busi­ness. How­ev­er, with the present month­ly cost to up­keep a race­horse bor­der­ing on $5,000, on­ly wealthy peo­ple can af­ford to be in­volved giv­en to­day's un­at­trac­tive lev­el of stakes.

We al­so need dif­fer­ent, in­no­v­a­tive and "out of the box" ideas to in­ject new life and ex­cite­ment in rac­ing but these in­vari­ably cost mon­ey to im­ple­ment. Ex­act­ly one year ago I was priv­i­leged to meet pri­vate­ly with TTRA Chair­man Derek Chin and af­ter our main con­cern was ad­dressed, he out­lined his idea of T&T host­ing a Caribbean Rac­ing Chal­lenge in De­cem­ber 2011. Derek is a very suc­cess­ful risk tak­er, en­tre­pre­neur and vi­sion­ary and while I thought his con­cept ex­cel­lent and ex­cit­ing, I men­tioned the prob­a­ble lack of time for stake­hold­ers to put every­thing in place. Al­so, it sound­ed an ex­pen­sive un­der­tak­ing but Derek was con­fi­dent he would get the nec­es­sary fi­nan­cial back­ing. Maybe he did not an­tic­i­pate how a de­clin­ing world/re­gion­al econ­o­my could af­fect lo­cal spon­sor­ships neg­a­tive­ly.

The big Rac­ing Chal­lenge day took place on De­cem­ber 03, 2011 and while there were sev­er­al pos­i­tive fea­tures, there were al­so se­ri­ous dis­ap­point­ments es­pe­cial­ly the hor­ri­ble weath­er, few vis­it­ing hors­es and the lack of suf­fi­cient spon­sor­ship which meant the well-in­ten­tioned project which gen­er­at­ed much pos­i­tive pub­lic ac­claim, ac­tu­al­ly suf­fered an un­wel­come fi­nan­cial loss. The ques­tion now is "who pays for the loss?" And re­gard­less of the an­swer, the end re­sult is that rac­ing suf­fers and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­creas­ing stakes soon as was in­tend­ed by BLB, has tak­en a ma­jor blow. The Michael Scott-led task force had bet­ter col­lect all le­gal tax­es from the bet­ting shops and casi­nos in a hur­ry be­cause we have no time to waste!

Rac­ing stake­hold­ers have to con­sid­er whether or not to stage a re­peat in De­cem­ber 2012, as­sum­ing a con­struc­tive and hon­est cri­tique-pros and cons-of the 2011 edi­tion has tak­en place. Who takes the lead­er­ship role and the risks? What changes to the 2011 for­mat should be made? How can we con­trol costs? How do we ex­cite the fans? My opin­ion is that col­lec­tive­ly (re­peat col­lec­tive­ly) we should give the Caribbean Rac­ing Chal­lenge an­oth­er try, but sched­ule it for East­er 2013 when the weath­er is more pre­dictable and the pub­lic has re­cov­ered from the ex­pense and dis­trac­tions of Christ­mas (2012) and Car­ni­val (2013).

How­ev­er for this to work, the plan­ning must start now and cer­tain pos­i­tive man­age­ment prac­tices must be in place such as: (a) All par­ties must row in the same di­rec­tion; (b) Rea­son­able and re­al­is­tic goals must be agreed on with time­frames to suit; (c) 70 per cent of fund­ing must be ob­tained in first six months; (d) Cred­i­bil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty are crit­i­cal fac­tors; (e) Lead­ers must un­der­stand that they need com­mit­ted fol­low­ers (not jok­ers and fakes) to achieve goals so ef­fec­tive staffing is crit­i­cal (f) There must be on­go­ing mon­i­tor­ing of every key ac­tiv­i­ty in terms of progress, hur­dles, the un­ex­pect­ed, ex­pense con­trol; (g) Pri­or­i­ties must be set but can change along the way.

Two key say­ings, both about peo­ple not ma­te­ri­als, should be our guide­lines. (a) "In every group, there are those who wait for things to hap­pen; those who watch things hap­pen; those who hope noth­ing hap­pens and those few who ac­tu­al­ly make things hap­pen." We must re­ward those who make things hap­pen and get rid of the rest quick­ly or pre­pare to ac­cept fail­ure.

(b) "What you are speaks so loud­ly, we can­not hear what you say." We do not want mere words. What we seek are the in­tan­gi­ble char­ac­ter­is­tics of trust, re­spect, cour­tesy, praise, two way com­mu­ni­ca­tion, per­son­al ex­am­ple, lis­ten­ing, em­pa­thy, un­der­stand­ing and the lead­er­ship, sup­port and en­cour­age­ment to deal with tem­po­rary ad­ver­si­ty/prob­lems which will oc­cur. More than any­thing, the lead­er­ship style of the Project Man­ag­er must sug­gest he is hum­ble enough to ac­cept that each of his work­ers has ideas, strengths, tal­ents and skills that he does not have or to the same de­gree and he must use these to ad­van­tage. Are we ready to rum­ble?

Con­grats to Zam­bia

I may be the on­ly Tri­ni foot­ball fan who is ec­sta­t­ic that Zam­bia won the Africa Na­tions Cup last week beat­ing the favourite Ivory Coast 8-7 in penal­ty shots. I was priv­i­leged to work in Zam­bia 1967/68 and learnt life skills and man­age­ment lessons for which I have been ever grate­ful. Try deal­ing with a pop­u­la­tion speak­ing 77 dif­fer­ent di­alects and all try­ing to learn Eng­lish. Imag­ine sit­ting un­der a huge samaan tree in a pas­ture teach­ing lo­cals how to change Pounds, shillings and pence in­to their new lo­cal cur­ren­cy of Kwacha and Ng­we. How about chas­ing a crick­et ball to the bound­ary and dis­cov­er­ing I could not breathe, be­cause I did not know Oc­to­ber was dubbed "sui­cide month" be­cause of unique weath­er changes at that al­ti­tude.

Don't for­get my wak­ing up one night and notic­ing my pants were miss­ing, walk­ing to the cor­ri­dor and kick­ing a two-feet long knife which the thief had dropped when a neigh­bour's dog smelt him through our bed­room win­dow. I could write many ar­ti­cles about Zam­bia far more in­ter­est­ing than wor­ry­ing about the nev­er end­ing trou­bles of dif­fer­ent sport­ing bod­ies in T&T, but of course my main mem­o­ry is that our son Dou­glas was born in Kitwe on the Zam­bian Cop­per­belt, so he is ac­tu­al­ly more African that just about any­one liv­ing in T&T. We ac­tu­al­ly made 25 copies of his birth cer­tifi­cate think­ing the poor boy would spend his life hav­ing to prove he was born in Africa, but to this day not one has ever been need­ed.

Cry my beloved Coun­try

I have watched most of the Bangladesh Pre­mier League so far and the pres­ence of Gayle, Samuels, Rus­sell, Dwayne Smith, Pol­lard, Dwayne Bra­vo, Coop­er and Chan­der­paul while their na­tion­al teams are play­ing the most im­por­tant tour­na­ment at home, tells me where their hearts tru­ly lie-I don't blame them-and more im­por­tant where the fu­ture of West In­dies crick­et is head­ing with oth­ers signed up for IPL and Sar­wan off to play for Leices­ter­shire.

Al­so, let us not for­get that our first class four-day games are now rou­tine­ly fin­ished in three and even two days and any bats­man scor­ing 50 or more is an in­stant hero. Add the box­ing and foot­ball woes along with sev­er­al near use­less politi­cians, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion con­tro­ver­sy, law­less dri­vers, world class mur­der rate, a le­gal sys­tem but not a jus­tice sys­tem, will­ing but in­ef­fec­tive po­lice, atro­cious coun­try roads and un­rea­son­able, short-sight­ed, self­ish union lead­ers, and T&T present­ly re­flects the ti­tle of a well-known book of yes­ter­year, "Cry my beloved Coun­try!"