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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Headline News not good at all

by

20140730

The horse rac­ing com­mu­ni­ty was rocked by the re­ports that the coun­try's best race­horse, Head­line News, suf­fered a po­ten­tial­ly ca­reer-end­ing in­jury two Sun­days ago. While the re­ports would be es­pe­cial­ly dis­ap­point­ing for the con­nec­tions of the colt, Ruthven Smith and his fam­i­ly, the sport is much the poor­er for the loss of this hand­some and ex­treme­ly tal­ent­ed race­horse.The of­fi­cial form­lines for this colt's ca­reer would read 12141211111. As im­pres­sive as these form lines are, they still gross­ly un­der-rep­re­sent the tal­ent that this colt pos­sessed. Head­line News was on his way to be­com­ing one of the best cre­oles ever seen in T&T.His first sec­ond oc­curred up­on his re­turn to rac­ing af­ter near­ly one year on the side­lines.He was pitched in, at what was prob­a­bly the deep end, al­though that was not com­plete­ly recog­nised at the time. His first start back was over 1,200 me­tres on atro­cious track con­di­tions and his main mar­ket ri­val was Per­fect Day.

That ri­val won the race be­fore go­ing on to run away with the 2013 Oaks Stakes (Group 1). A per­fect­ly re­spectable per­for­mance giv­en the long lay off, the track con­di­tions and the dis­tance that was like­ly on the short side.The sec­ond oc­ca­sion on which this colt was beat­en was in the Trinidad Der­by. He fin­ished fourth, af­ter rac­ing promi­nent­ly in the ear­ly stages.The colt dropped back as if beat­en at the 600 me­tres mark­er on­ly to re-ral­ly strong­ly in the straight and be beat­en nar­row­ly in­to fourth. Head­line News' per­for­mance in that race bore all of the hall­marks of an in­ex­pe­ri­enced run­ner, more than a lack of abil­i­ty. The win­ner, Big­man in Town, would find that out on many oc­ca­sions sub­se­quent­ly. The on­ly oth­er oc­ca­sion on which Head­line News was de­feat­ed was in the Caribbean Cham­pi­on Stakes, go­ing down by a short­head to Big­man in Town.

That took the score be­tween these two hors­es to 2-0 in favour of Big­man, sub­se­quent to which Head­line News was to race un­beat­en. On that oc­ca­sion, the two colts hooked up at the top of the straight and af­ter bat­tling for the en­tire length of the straight, a Wilmer Galviz rid­den Big­man just nosed out a Bri­an Boodram­s­ingh rid­den Head­line News.Those were the de­feats. Al­most all of his wins were ac­com­plished in em­phat­ic fash­ion. On his de­but as a two-year-old, the dogs were bark­ing his name even be­fore he graced the sand track.He pro­ceed­ed to hack up by al­most six lengths from War of Words, who would go on to win the first two legs of the Triple Crown and fin­ish sec­ond in the Der­by. Af­ter his re­turn from in­jury, and his sec­ond place to Per­fect Day, he made his first start over 1750 me­tres against an or­di­nary bunch that in­clud­ed Red Howler.

He broke loose from the start­ing gate, run around the track for one full cir­cuit, be checked over by the vet and cleared to race and then made all, de­feat­ing his field by al­most six lengths again.

This was clear­ly an ex­tra­or­di­nary colt. Af­ter los­ing in the Der­by, he re­turned for the off-turf three-year-old cre­ole Memo­r­i­al Clas­sic and pro­ceed­ed to win by any dis­tance he liked. This was fol­lowed by his nar­row de­feat in the Caribbean Cham­pi­on Stakes. There­after he went on his roll.A com­mand­ing vic­to­ry over Big­man in Town in the Re­pub­lic Bank Gold Cup was fol­lowed by a thrash­ing of his ri­vals this year in the Caribbean Turf Cham­pi­onship, the Starlight Stakes, the Cham­pagne Stakes and the Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah Stakes. He de­feat­ed Big­man in Town for a sec­ond time in the Starlight Stakes and some of the best im­port­ed turf stay­ers in the Cham­pagne Stakes. One could not help but get the im­pres­sion that this colt was still im­prov­ing and the sky was the lim­it in terms of what he could have achieved.

Away from the track, the pen­chant for dis­obe­di­ence in T&T con­tin­ues to have no lim­its. In spite of nu­mer­ous signs on the lo­cal track ad­vis­ing that the Grand Stand is a no-smok­ing zone, many tur­fites con­tin­ue to smoke unashamed­ly. This smok­ing takes place in the full glare of ARC of­fi­cials and the pro­tec­tive ser­vices but no one is asked to de­sist. When you add to this that the dress code that was an­nounced ear­li­er this year con­tin­ues to be flaunt­ed by pa­trons; we re­al­ly can nev­er be sur­prised that our beloved coun­try is in the state that it cur­rent­ly finds it­self. Most peo­ple seem to be­lieve that laws, rules and guide­lines on­ly ap­ply if they do not in­con­ve­nience us.Once there is any in­con­ve­nience, it should be an elec­tive. When jock­eys are al­lowed to smoke oth­er stuff and on­ly be mild­ly rep­ri­mand­ed, we should be able to un­der­stand its gen­e­sis. Noth­ing is sacro­sanct in this place.Hope­ful­ly the ARC will one day ap­pre­ci­ate that each or­gan­i­sa­tion can make a dif­fer­ence if it but on­ly at­tempts to do the right thing that it has pow­er to do. Un­til that day, we will con­tin­ue to treat all rules/laws/guide­lines as op­tion­al. :: AB


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