An­dre Bap­tiste

We are just past the halfway stage of the rac­ing sea­son and it is prob­a­bly a good time for a re­view. The lat­est sta­tis­tics avail­able are as at Ju­ly 7. Peren­ni­al train­er's cham­pi­on, John O'Brien, is once again dom­i­nat­ing his peers. O'Brien has won 30 races to that date, with an im­pres­sive strike rate of 19.2 per cent wins and 45.5 per cent (in the mon­ey). He has had 20 in­di­vid­ual win­ners from 40 in­di­vid­ual starters. His hors­es have won an im­pres­sive $1.7 mil­lion and he seems well on course for an­oth­er Train­ers' Cham­pi­onship. Al­though he has the largest sta­ble in the coun­try, his suc­cess has been fu­elled by an em­pha­sis on de­tail and a very good sup­port team. He has al­so been able to main­tain a cadre of own­ers pre­pared to in­vest in qual­i­ty an­i­mals and per­se­vere with their charges even when in­ca­pable of per­form­ing at high­er lev­els. This gives O'Brien am­mu­ni­tion in vir­tu­al­ly every grade. His con­sis­ten­cy is ad­mirable and it is lit­tle sur­prise that his hors­es are of­ten well fan­cied in their races. Sec­ond in the stand­ings is De­r­ick Mosca, whose pri­ma­ry pa­trons are Shiv­am Ma­haraj and Juan Navar­ro. He has had 14 win­ners of 21 races from 28 in­di­vid­ual starters. His hors­es have amassed just over $735,000 in their 111 starts. Own­er/train­er Harold Chadee lies third and is hav­ing a very good sea­son. He has had 12 win­ners of 22 races from 20 in­di­vid­ual starters. His hors­es have raced 102 times and amassed earn­ings of $691,000.

Hav­ing a very qui­et sea­son by his own high stan­dards, is train­er Glenn Mendez. The peren­ni­al run­ner-up, he lies fourth with six in­di­vid­ual win­ners of six races from 13 starters. His hors­es have still man­aged to amass just over $400,000 from their 67 starts. In the Jock­eys' stand­ings, ex­pect­ed­ly O'Brien's first call rid­er, Bri­an Boodram­s­ingh holds a healthy lead over his ri­vals. Boodram­s­ingh has rid­den 26 win­ners from his 152 rides, a strike rate of 17 per cent. Boodram­s­ingh has to be ad­mired for the man­ner in which he has avoid­ed so many of the pit­falls that have be­fall­en oth­er young promis­ing rid­ers. Too many of them have ei­ther had their ear­ly suc­cess­es in­flate their ego or fall­en in­to ques­tion­able com­pa­ny. Hope­ful­ly, he will not find the lure of mi­nor Cana­di­an tracks too ap­peal­ing to re­main in Trinidad. In sec­ond po­si­tion, is for­mer cham­pi­on Bri­an Hard­ing. He has rid­den 13 win­ners from his 95 rides for a strike rate of 14 per cent. He does not ap­pear to be get­ting the same qual­i­ty rides as in past sea­sons, though he has se­cured the ride on prob­a­bly Der­by favourite, One­to­keep, and it is hoped that con­nec­tions con­tin­ue to show the faith in the vet­er­an rid­er for the big race it­self.

An­oth­er vet­er­an, No­bel Abrego, is third with 12 wins from his 56 rides for an im­pres­sive strike rate of 21.4 per cent. The pauci­ty of rides is more a re­flec­tion of Abrego's own re­laxed ap­proach to com­pet­i­tive race rid­ing since it is wide­ly known that he would uni­lat­er­al­ly de­ter­mine whether he would ride on any par­tic­u­lar race day. A very strong and as­tute rid­er, he is an as­set to have on your side in the ma­jor races. In fourth po­si­tion is an­oth­er latin rid­er, Richard Perez.

He is the prin­ci­pal rid­er for Juan Navar­ro and has amassed 12 wins from his 84 rides, for a strike rate of 14 per cent. The jock­ey colony in T&T num­bers just un­der 50 rid­ers but nine rid­ers have won ap­prox 80 per cent of the to­tal races won. None of the hors­es have been stand­out. The list is head­ed by the Mid­sum­mer Clas­sic win­ner, One­to­keep, who has amassed $421,000. One­to­keep added $300,000 to his to­tal with his vic­to­ry in the T&T Breed­ers Clas­sic on Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, so re­mains in a clear lead. He is fol­lowed by fel­low three-year-olds Un­ques­tion­able and Big Thing who have amassed $238,000 and $181,000 re­spec­tive­ly. Im­pres­sive im­port­ed Ig­ni­tion Coil is in fourth with four wins from his first five starts, to­tal­ing $178,500. As in pri­or years, Bruceon­th­eloose con­tin­ues to per­form at a high lev­el, and tur­fites have seen out­stand­ing per­for­mances from Sig­nal Alert and Sa­cred Trust. At the ad­min­is­tra­tion lev­el, the sea­son has been plagued with the usu­al con­fu­sion. The Boo­gie Blues saga has not been re­solved and the mat­ter now seems des­tined for the courts. Its own­er, Derek Chin, has not been re-in­stat­ed as chair­man of the TTRA, but has in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to with­draw from rac­ing. This will be an­oth­er sad loss. The TTRA, how­ev­er, showed con­sid­er­able strength in sus­pend­ing rid­er Gary La­ban for ten days af­ter a sus­pect ride on Ace of Spades, in a four-horse race in ear­ly Ju­ly. On the pos­i­tive side, the BLB has to be cred­it­ed for orig­i­nat­ing the idea of the T&T Breed­ers Clas­sic. On the neg­a­tive side, the race day plan­ners of the ARC con­tin­ue to show a com­plete lack of imag­i­na­tion in the sched­ul­ing of races. Over­all, the first half of the sea­son has been large­ly in­dis­tin­guish­able from pre­vi­ous sea­sons.