?Hugh Hen­der­son

I may have to ask my Sports Ed­i­tor for time off in an at­tempt to re­gain my en­thu­si­asm to write pos­i­tive things about lo­cal sport. Our re­gion­al crick­et is pa­thet­ic, horse rac­ing is ever-con­tro­ver­sial, foot­ball is cost­ly and un­suc­cess­ful, ath­let­ics is rea­son­able, bad­minton ap­pears to be in tur­moil. Luck­i­ly, vol­ley­ball seems okay as does swim­ming with George Bovell III still set­ting na­tion­al records and busi­ness­man William Munroe do­ing a fan­tas­tic job en­cour­ag­ing kids at his pri­vate pool, what a won­der­ful ges­ture!

Cy­cling can boast of two gold medals and ta­ble ten­nis has pro­duced Aaron Wil­son,13, and Arun Roop­nar­ine, 14, with world rank­ings. Present­ly, Aaron and Arun are in Cu­ba for the Caribbean Cadet and Ju­nior cham­pi­onships.

Add to the neg­a­tive sport­ing sce­nario, a globe trot­ting PM, sev­er­al (not all) hope­less, in­de­ci­sive, over­paid, square peg in round hole politi­cians, un­rea­son­able, self seek­ing and short­sight­ed union lead­ers, count­less "road­hogs" on the high­ways along with on­go­ing crime, cor­rup­tion and rob­beries (imag­ine steal­ing a met­al bridge!) and what do we get? A grim na­tion­al pic­ture not like­ly to im­prove quick­ly the way things are go­ing. These are com­ments I hear all over the place and I agree with them so am pleased to read that Gov­ern­ment is con­cerned about its pub­lic im­age and hope­ful­ly will do some­thing pos­i­tive to re­gain some cred­i­bil­i­ty. They sure need it! For the records, I vot­ed PP but am most dis­ap­point­ed and dis­il­lu­sioned with present per­for­mance.

Three peo­ple sto­ries

Here are three nice peo­ple sto­ries to help cel­e­brate East­er. I was chat­ting with Sharon Fer­reira, wife of ex-San Fer­nan­do May­or, Ger­ard but more im­por­tant for my sto­ry, the grand-daugh­ter of the late Ernie Melville, founder of Melville Ship­ping, one of the nicest men I have known and def­i­nite­ly the most gra­cious "los­er" I have en­coun­tered in my life. I part owned four hors­es with Ernie and need­less to say they ran "down the field" more of­ten than not, yet Ernie al­ways had the biggest smile and said con­sol­ing words such as: "He ran a promis­ing race", "That was great fun. I en­joyed that", "Next time for sure," while I was ready to cry with em­bar­rass­ment. Ernie owned the 1978 Der­by win­ner El Camino and five of us at Sco­tia­bank leased Mag­ic Cir­cle. The day ar­rived when they raced against one an­oth­er at Ari­ma and Mag­ic Cir­cle beat El Camino by a short head. Ernie came over to us af­ter the lead-in, slapped us on the back, beam­ing the widest smile and ut­tered words I will nev­er for­get.

"Hearty con­grat­u­la­tions. That was a fan­tas­tic fin­ish. I am so glad I was here to en­joy the race." And his Der­by win­ner had just been beat­en! Sharon gave her sto­ry. El Camino was se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent T&T at the Clas­si­co in Puer­to Ri­co and Ernie promised to take his wife and two young grand-daugh­ters to see the race. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, at the last minute El Camino broke down and the Tre­strail owned fil­ly Re­flec­tion was the re­place­ment. Sharon men­tioned to her grand­fa­ther how dis­ap­point­ed she was that the fam­i­ly would miss the trip ex­pe­ri­ence, on­ly to hear Ernie say with ex­cite­ment in his voice: "Of course we are go­ing! We must sup­port Dorothy (Tre­strail) and T&T". I won­der how many Ernie Melvilles are left in the world to­day. I feel so priv­i­leged to have rubbed shoul­ders for years with a man of such strong char­ac­ter and beau­ti­ful dis­po­si­tion and nev­er re­mem­ber him be­ing any­thing but charm­ing, gra­cious and gen­er­ous. He was a per­son­al friend of my fa­ther in law and they shared a love for breed­ing Wiemariner dogs so I was able to meet him in count­less non-rac­ing sit­u­a­tions. What an ex­cep­tion­al and mem­o­rable gen­tle­man!

Andy Stephen , trust­ing and sen­si­tive

Last Mon­day I had a phone call from ex-ap­pren­tice jock­ey Andy Stephen who now lives in Saska­toon, Cana­da with his Cana­di­an wife. Eigh­teen years ago when Andy was 16, I met him un­der the big tree in the Ari­ma pad­dock and tried to help him emo­tion­al­ly as his fa­ther had re­cent­ly passed away. As well, he had to com­pete with the achieve­ments of old­er broth­er An­tho­ny who was al­ready a cham­pi­on ap­pren­tice and open jock­ey – nev­er an easy task. Andy was qui­et, unas­sum­ing, trust­ing and sen­si­tive and we de­vel­oped a strong bond which has nev­er fad­ed. In 1999 I arranged for him to join his broth­er in Macau where he spent two years ex­er­cis­ing hors­es for a lead­ing sta­ble and a few years ago I vis­it­ed him and Kurt Rag­birs­ingh at Mar­quis Downs in Saska­toon. Both Andy and Kurt, whose char­ac­ter pro­file is sim­i­lar to Andy's, nev­er for­get to phone at Christ­mas or on my birth­day, and Andy knows that every morn­ing I drink my cof­fee from a mug with a rac­ing mo­tif which he gave me.

He was nev­er a cham­pi­on rid­er but al­ways a cham­pi­on young man. If on­ly to­day's young jock­eys were as po­lite and thought­ful. Andy told me that he and Glo­ria had pur­chased a four-bed­room home on 40 acres of land about 25 min­utes out­side Saska­toon and should move in by Ju­ly. In time they hope to open a farm to board brood­mares and in the sum­mers would cul­ti­vate a large veg­gie gar­den. When we lived in Cana­da, we al­ways plant­ed a veg­gie gar­den and en­joyed some enor­mous toma­toes! I hope oth­er jock­eys use this lit­tle sto­ry as mo­ti­va­tion to think out­side the box and pre­pare them­selves for oc­cu­pa­tions af­ter their rid­ing days about which I speak to them of­ten. Andy has a job "up north" with a com­pa­ny em­ploy­ing 6000 peo­ple, where he works for three weeks and then spends one week at home. Dur­ing the sum­mer he will prob­a­bly use his week at home to ex­er­cise hors­es at Mar­quis Downs where he is well known.

I am so hap­py for Andy, the griev­ing boy stand­ing un­der the pad­dock tree hop­ing some­one would of­fer him a ride. I could not of­fer a ride but tried to of­fer a kind word and fig­u­ra­tive­ly wipe away the oc­ca­sion­al tear, which ap­proach led to a sound friend­ship be­tween two peo­ple of vast­ly dif­fer­ent ages, fam­i­ly back­grounds and ed­u­ca­tion. Life is tru­ly won­der­ful when we fo­cus on the pos­i­tives in the hearts and souls of oth­ers and keep the neg­a­tives to our­selves.

Ze­ro tol­er­ance?

A fi­nal rac­ing ques­tion per­tain­ing to the Boo­gie Blues sit­u­a­tion - is there an uni­ver­sal­ly ac­cept­ed de­f­i­n­i­tion of the phrase "ze­ro tol­er­ance" as it per­tains to find­ing a pro­hib­it­ed sub­stance in the urine of a race horse? Does "ze­ro" mean "O", or can there be a dif­fer­ent in­ter­pre­ta­tion? Has the lo­cal mean­ing of "ze­ro tol­er­ance" ever been spelt out in ir­refutable de­tail? Should we hire a lawyer from Tim­buc­too to set­tle the is­sue once and for all? Come on peo­ple, let's grow up and pre­vent fur­ther ridicule.

Ramdin valu­able prop­er­ty

I am not be­ing wise af­ter the event but why was De­nesh Ramdin al­lowed to play in the se­mi-fi­nal against Bar­ba­dos when he was not fit to keep wick­et which is his prime role? What were the pos­si­bil­i­ties of fur­ther in­jury to his fin­ger, field­ing or catch­ing with his bare hands? How about be­ing hit on the fin­ger again while bat­ting? Read­ers know I should be on the board of di­rec­tors of the Ramdin Fan Club and re­gard him as very valu­able prop­er­ty. I was fu­ri­ous when the team was an­nounced. Now with a pair of ducks and be­ing cap­tain of a non-per­form­ing side, his per­son­al rep­u­ta­tion has gone down sev­er­al notch­es in the pub­lic eye. The same ap­plies to the na­tion­al se­lec­tors, team man­ag­er and coach. They need their heads ex­am­ined and hope­ful­ly the MRI will not be the same as the fa­mous re­mark of ex-Yan­kee base­ball catch­er Yo­gi Berra who was hit on the head and ad­vised the me­dia that the x-ray of his brain showed noth­ing!

Wast­ing time and mon­ey

I see that the on­go­ing af­fair be­tween WICB and Chris Gayle has been set­tled ex­cept, if, but, how­ev­er, maybe and pos­si­bly. Gayle and Mar­lene Coudray are in the same boat, al­ways in the head­lines with no ob­vi­ous pur­pose to make the world stop spin­ning – full of sound and fury sig­ni­fy­ing noth­ing. We sure know how to waste time and mon­ey!

Have a laugh

Fi­nal at­tor­ney joke:

At­tor­ney: "Doc­tor be­fore you per­formed the au­top­sy, did you check for a pulse?" Wit­ness: "No".

A: "Did you check for blood pres­sure?" W: "No."

A: "Did you check for breath­ing?" W: "No."

A: "So then it is pos­si­ble that that the pa­tient was alive when you be­gan the au­top­sy?" W: "No."

A: "How can you be so sure Doc­tor?" W: "Be­cause his brain was sit­ting in a jar on my desk."

A: "I see, but could the pa­tient still have been alive, nev­er­the­less?" W: "Yes, it is pos­si­ble that he could have been alive and prac­tic­ing law."