An­dre E Bap­tiste

The rac­ing world in T&T was hit with the ex­pect­ed an­nounce­ment that lead­ing race­horse own­er Derek Chin was dis­pos­ing of all of his lo­cal rac­ing in­ter­ests and demit­ting the sport in T&T. Al­though the an­nounce­ment it­self was not un­ex­pect­ed, giv­en the on­go­ing im­broglio in­volv­ing the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) chair­man's horse, Boo­gie Blues, his de­par­ture leaves a sig­nif­i­cant void in the lo­cal in­dus­try. While there re­mains a num­ber of unan­swered ques­tions and the mat­ter seems head­ed to the lo­cal courts (maybe even the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice), Chin has put all of his rac­ing stock up for sale, be­liev­ing that he has been un­fair­ly treat­ed by many in­clud­ing per­haps even the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Stephen Cadiz. What­ev­er the cir­cum­stances, it is very un­for­tu­nate that this mat­ter could be dragged along be­cause peo­ple were ei­ther afraid to make de­ci­sions or were too ill-in­formed to care. In this re­gard, there have been re­ports that Christo­pher Ar­mond has not been paid the last cou­ple of months by the TTRA for his ex­ten­sive work as an ad­vi­sor and al­so that David Loreg­nard, the for­mer sec­re­tary of the TTRA, who was ex­ist­ing out­side of the TTRA since Chin's ap­point­ment, is be­ing brought back in­to the full work­ing di­vi­sion of the TTRA. Some be­lieve, all of this added to the ques­tions over the 2011 Gold Cup vic­to­ry, may have forced Chin to re­lin­quish all his po­si­tions in horserac­ing. Per­haps the ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter will in­deed an­swer whether these were promis­es made to Chin and if so, why have they now been bro­ken. The lo­cal rac­ing in­dus­try can­not af­ford to lose an own­er such as Chin. At the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Ocala April Sales of Two Year Olds in train­ing, lo­cal buy­ers pur­chased sev­en thor­ough­breds on­ly.

Last year, pur­chas­es by lo­cal own­ers amount­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 hors­es while in 2010, it was re­port­ed that at least 22 two-year-olds were pur­chased (at var­i­ous sales). The de­cline in the num­ber of pur­chas­es can be di­rect­ly linked to the ex­o­dus of top own­ers from the sport in this coun­try, main­ly through frus­tra­tion with both the sys­tem and the peo­ple that ad­min­is­ter the sport. There are cur­rent­ly just a hand­ful of own­ers will­ing to in­vest in ac­quir­ing new for­eign stock to im­prove the qual­i­ty of rac­ing in this coun­try. In past years, Chin and Ju­nior Sam­my were two of the more pro­lif­ic buy­ers of im­port­ed stock. The in­dus­try is hurt­ing as a re­sult of the ab­sence of the lat­ter and the de­par­ture of the for­mer will on­ly add to the hurt. It is in­ter­est­ing that in both cas­es, there are com­mon prob­lems and com­mon per­sons con­nect­ed to both sit­u­a­tions. The pity is that it would ap­pear that the Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB), an­oth­er gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed board chaired by for­mer Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) pres­i­dent, now BLB chair­man Ka­ma Ma­haraj, al­so has knowl­edge of what is need­ed to solve some of the sit­u­a­tion and per­haps Min­is­ter Cadiz needs to con­sult him as well, af­ter all he did ap­point both Chin (TTRA) and Ma­haraj (BLB) to these gov­ern­men­tal Boards...Or did he? The de­par­ture of Chin does not on­ly im­pact on the horse pop­u­la­tion, it is al­so cre­ates a sig­nif­i­cant void in the in­tel­li­gence and ideas quo­tient in the in­dus­try. Chin was un­doubt­ed­ly a vi­sion­ary and un­der his lead­er­ship and stew­ard­ship, the in­dus­try dis­played more in­no­va­tion than on any pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sion in the re­cent past and that is a fact. The oth­er ma­jor news this week was the very pub­lic war of words be­tween the BLB and the Book­mak­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion. First a re­cap. The mat­ter be­gan when the BLB's chair­man launched a pub­lic at­tack on the book­mak­ers, ef­fec­tive­ly ques­tion­ing the quan­tum of tax­es paid/col­lect­ed. The Book­mak­ers re­spond­ed im­me­di­ate­ly with a full page ad­ver­tise­ment cast­ing var­i­ous as­per­sions on the op­er­a­tions of the BLB and to a less­er ex­tent, the Ari­ma Race Club. All of the stake­hold­ers then re­spond­ed with their own full page ad­ver­tise­ment sup­port­ing the work of the BLB and re­it­er­at­ing the con­cerns over the quan­tum of tax paid by the Book­mak­ers. The num­bers do make somber read­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est re­lease, where­as the tax­es paid by the ARC in­creased by 113 per­cent be­tween 2006 and 2011, the tax­es paid by the Book­mak­ers de­creased by 14.1 per­cent. First of all, the fol­low­ing com­ments are based on the pre­sump­tion that these num­bers have been ver­i­fied by the sig­na­to­ries to the lat­est re­lease-the chair­man of the BLB, the pres­i­dent of the ARC and the pres­i­dents of the Jock­eys As­so­ci­a­tion, Stud Farm As­so­ci­a­tion, Race­horse Own­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and Train­ers As­so­ci­a­tion. This caveat has to be men­tioned up front be­cause we have seen in re­cent times at least one in­ci­dent of a state­ment from a vo­cal pub­lic fig­ure cit­ing ex­treme­ly false num­bers with great con­fi­dence. Un­for­tu­nate­ly many of these in­di­vid­u­als do not have the strength of char­ac­ter to sub­se­quent­ly ad­mit that they had mis­led the pub­lic. For­tu­nate­ly these wrongs have a way of right­ing them­selves on oc­ca­sion, be­cause while to err is hu­man, to con­ceal is crim­i­nal. As men­tioned above, I will work on the ba­sis that those quot­ed num­bers have been con­firmed, par­tic­u­lar­ly as these men, have all signed their names to this state­ment which would sug­gest some sem­blance of ev­i­dence in their find­ings, and un­til the Book­mak­ers re­fute it, we have no choice but to fol­low this line of think­ing. The on­ly way that the ARC tax pay­ments could have gone up, while the Book­mak­ers' de­clined, would be as a re­sult of a sig­nif­i­cant shift in gam­bling pat­terns away from the Book­mak­ers and to­wards the ARC (and their OTBs). This shift would re­sult in a ma­jor mar­ket share move in favour of the ARC. Un­for­tu­nate­ly for the Book­mak­ers, there is no anec­do­tal ev­i­dence to sup­port such a de­vel­op­ment. It is true that a num­ber of bet­ting shops have ceased op­er­a­tions over the last five years but this would have to be ac­com­pa­nied by a sub­stan­tial in­crease in the mor­tal­i­ty rate for horse rac­ing gam­blers for the Book­mak­ers to have any pos­si­ble de­fense. The best de­fense at this stage would seem to be to ques­tion the va­lid­i­ty of the quot­ed num­bers.

What­ev­er the pros and cons of ei­ther sides' po­si­tion, there is no doubt that it is an­oth­er shot across the bow of the horse rac­ing in­dus­try. There was a point in time when it ap­peared that the Book­mak­ers and the BLB/ARC were com­bin­ing their re­sources in the best in­ter­est of the in­dus­try, in fact such was the ap­par­ent ca­ma­raderie, that the Book­mak­ers in re­cent years were spon­sors of a rac­ing day at San­ta Rosa Park. That har­mo­ny seems to have evap­o­rat­ed over the last few months. The cur­rent fight, as with the ex­o­dus of lead­ing own­ers, will on­ly has­ten the fur­ther demise of the lo­cal rac­ing in­dus­try. While the Book­mak­ers may be­lieve that they can sur­vive with­out any lo­cal rac­ing sec­tor, they should have a look at what has tran­spired in coun­tries with­out their own lo­cal rac­ing prod­uct. It is dif­fi­cult to ra­tio­nalise the rea­sons for the cor­re­la­tion, but again, anec­do­tal ev­i­dence has shown that when a lo­cal rac­ing in­dus­try is al­lowed to die or folds up, the lo­cal rac­ing gam­bling sec­tor tends to di­min­ish. Part of this could be that a large seg­ment of the horse rac­ing gam­blers in a coun­try tend to come from those em­ployed in the sec­tor (quot­ed at 5,000 per­sons present­ly) and those ac­tive­ly in­volved in the lo­cal sport as an own­er or oth­er­wise. When the lo­cal sec­tor dis­ap­pears, so does those 5,000 jobs, the gam­bling ac­tiv­i­ties of those in­di­vid­u­als and the gen­er­al in­ter­est of the own­ers and oth­er play­ers. There are nu­mer­ous oth­er gam­bling op­tions for own­ers such as the mem­bers' clubs, and on­line bet­ting sites. Those with the knowl­edge and in­ter­est so to do, will sim­ply switch their at­ten­tions out of horse rac­ing al­to­geth­er, is this ei­ther want at the mo­ment. Some have sug­gest­ed not for the first time, that it is an­oth­er case of mis­guid­ed or in­flat­ed per­son­al­i­ties on both sides. If that is so, then horserac­ing needs to find a me­di­a­tor to solve this prob­lem. I can think of at least two per­sons, one is Tony Har­ford, the oth­er is Joe Hadeed.