An­dre E Bap­tiste

On May 31, the sec­ond leg of the Triple Crown will be run off with a dis­ap­point­ing turnout of nine hors­es hav­ing paid the fi­nal sub­scrip­tions.The first leg al­so wit­nessed a fair­ly dis­ap­point­ing turnout with on­ly six hors­es.This trans­lates in­to a to­tal of 15 com­peti­tors in the first two triple crown races, which must be some sort of mod­ern day record.This jour­nal­ist cer­tain­ly can­not re­call the last time the coun­try's first two pre­mier clas­sics were con­test­ed by such a mea­gre num­ber of hors­es. The ques­tion is ob­vi­ous­ly what is hap­pen­ing to the breed in T&T.This year was sup­posed to be a wa­ter­shed year for the lo­cal breed in this coun­try.

We were go­ing to see the first three-year-old off­spring of at least three ex­cit­ing stal­lions–Maraa­hel, Charis­mat­ic Cat and Gold Mar­ket. While each have had many off­spring, on­ly Gold Mar­ket, via his Pot of Gold, has made an im­pact on the clas­sics thus far.While it is way too ear­ly to eval­u­ate these stal­lions, one must as­sess what might be the rea­son for the rel­a­tive lack of qual­i­ty run­ners on the lo­cal clas­sic scene. In fact, one com­men­ta­tor has com­ment­ed that the clas­sic crop is one of the poor­est in re­cent times.There is no doubt that we have not seen as many run­ners as we would have liked but the cause is what we are in pur­suit of. One of the first facts that jumps out is the low num­ber of three-year-old starters that we have seen, pe­ri­od.

Dis­cus­sions with many of the coun­try's train­ers in­di­cate that there has been a par­tic­u­lar­ly high rate of in­juries among lo­cal hors­es this year, and the three-year-old crop in par­tic­u­lar.The rea­son most fre­quent­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for this is the dry­ness of the track due to the dry weath­er sea­son and the ARC's in­ef­fec­tive wa­ter­ing pol­i­cy.While the for­mer was out­side of the club's con­trol, giv­en its an­nu­al re­cur­rence, one would have thought that the club would have ad­e­quate mea­sures in place to re­duce its im­pact on the rac­ing sur­face.One can on­ly hope that 2014 shows that the 2013 lessons have been learnt.

An­oth­er fac­tor put for­ward by ex­pe­ri­enced rac­ing per­son­nel is that the lo­cal breed is con­tin­u­ing to regress in terms of their lev­el of de­vel­op­ment.This is best il­lus­trat­ed by the con­tin­ued low lev­el of run­ners in the ear­ly two-year-old races and the rel­a­tive­ly late start to the rac­ing ca­reers of our two-year-olds in gen­er­al. Our two-year-olds gen­er­al­ly do not be­gin rac­ing un­til Au­gust or Sep­tem­ber of their ju­ve­nile years.In the mid 70s, ear­ly 80s, these an­i­mals be­gan rac­ing around Ju­ly, but cer­tain­ly since cen­tral­i­sa­tion we have seen the dates grad­u­al­ly pushed back.

The chal­lenge then be­comes that the lo­cal­ly-bred hors­es see their de­vel­op­ment be­ing rushed by ea­ger con­nec­tions giv­en the short clas­sic sea­son.The Der­by comes up in Sep­tem­ber and there are very few qual­i­ty races for West In­di­an-bred an­i­mals at the end of their clas­sic sea­son.

This hus­tle no doubt con­tributes to some of the in­juries ex­pe­ri­enced by the clas­sic crop. There are no easy so­lu­tions to this chal­lenge since the Der­by is al­ready one of the lat­est run in the Caribbean.One pos­si­bil­i­ty might be to re­vis­it the clas­sic dis­tances and re­vert to the days when the first clas­sic was on­ly run over 1,400 me­tres and progress the dis­tances from there.A third con­trib­u­tor is the ag­gres­sive train­ing meth­ods of most of our train­ers and the use of med­ica­tion in aid­ing the de­vel­op­ment of our an­i­mals. Most horse rac­ing peo­ple would be aware of the dif­fer­ent treat­ment of med­ica­tion in the US com­pared with the UK.The pros and the cons won't be ar­gued here but there must be some truth to the ar­gu­ment that the use of med­ica­tion in Trinidad some­what masks the progress of our young hors­es and con­tributes to their sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to in­juries.

Trinidad should re­al­ly look at adopt­ing the stan­dards which ap­ply in most of the de­vel­oped coun­tries–iron­i­cal­ly, it may aid in the longevi­ty of our hors­es.The fi­nal con­trib­u­tor that should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed is the rid­ing style of many of our jock­eys and ex­er­cise rid­ers.It is very im­por­tant that the ex­er­cise rid­er is able to give the train­er feed­back as to the horse's per­for­mance at the gal­lop.It is equal­ly im­por­tant that the rid­er has the skill to get the horse to do what he would like it to, for ex­am­ple, chang­ing leads in the home straight.When top rid­er Emile Ram­sam­my was in Trinidad dur­ing the first three or four months of the year, he pro­vid­ed in­valu­able in­sight to those train­ers who used his ser­vices at gal­lops and sub­se­quent­ly in var­i­ous races it­self.To the ex­tent that this as­pect can be im­proved, there is sure to be a re­duc­tion in in­juries to our race­hors­es.It is high time that ad­di­tion­al fo­cus is placed on the well-be­ing of our lo­cal horse pop­u­la­tion.