Rac­ing in T&T cur­rent­ly takes place rough­ly once per month (our next race day is April 6, East­er Mon­day), a sched­ule dic­tat­ed by a dwin­dling rac­ing pop­u­la­tion of be­tween 60 and 70 hors­es. De­spite this in­fre­quent rac­ing sched­ule, the horse pop­u­la­tion still re­quires near-dai­ly train­ing and ex­er­cise.

This takes place on ei­ther the turf or main track (sand). It is es­sen­tial, if a horse is to be prop­er­ly pre­pared for any giv­en race, that a min­i­mum amount of ex­er­cise gal­lops take place. On rare oc­ca­sions, if hors­es ei­ther have some sound­ness is­sues, their con­nec­tions may opt to utilise the equine swim­ming pool and/or vis­it one of the many beach­es for a sea swim.

​One of the es­sen­tial cri­te­ria for the safe use of the these tracks is that both sur­faces must be ad­e­quate­ly wa­tered. For the turf, ab­sence of ad­e­quate wa­ter­ing re­sults in the sur­face be­ing too firm for hors­es to gal­lop up­on with­out risk­ing in­jury. For the sand, ab­sence of ad­e­quate wa­ter­ing re­sults in the sur­face be­ing too loose for hors­es to gal­lop up­on with­out risk­ing in­jury. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, for many weeks now, this has been the predica­ment fac­ing lo­cal train­ers. The cause: no wa­ter.

​The Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) has been un­able to sus­tain­ably source wa­ter to en­sure that the coun­try’s rac­ing sur­faces are ad­e­quate­ly wa­tered. This has left train­ers frus­trat­ed by their in­abil­i­ty to pre­pare their charges or dis­ap­point­ed at the oc­cur­rence of an in­jury to their horse fol­low­ing use of the in­ap­pro­pri­ate sur­face.

This frus­tra­tion is com­pound­ed by an ap­par­ent­ly non­cha­lant at­ti­tude from those at ARC re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing it hap­pen. This non­cha­lance, read as in­dif­fer­ence, has been a con­stant char­ac­ter­is­tic of those re­spon­si­ble for look­ing af­ter the in­ter­ests of the sport for ages, in­ter­rupt­ed by a few good men.

​Re­cent­ly, an­oth­er batch of im­port­ed an­i­mals was brought in­to the coun­try, rang­ing in age from five to sev­en or eight. While it is to be hoped that they still have many rac­ing years ahead of them, this will large­ly de­pend on the abil­i­ty of their even­tu­al train­ers to get the prop­er ex­er­cise work in­to them.

One re­calls how, pos­si­bly one of the best of the im­port­ed an­i­mals, Kit­ty on a Whip, who cre­at­ed a very favourable im­pres­sion in her three starts, was struck down by in­jury af­ter just a few starts. A lost con­trib­u­tor to the re­vival of the sport.

The sit­u­a­tion with the sur­face is even worse for the younger ba­bies try­ing to find their way in­to the sport. In all prob­a­bil­i­ty, we have prob­a­bly seen all the 2026 three-year-olds but with the clas­sics (even that de­scrip­tion seems hol­low) loom­ing, un­less the is­sue with the prepa­ra­tion of our rac­ing sur­faces can be reme­died, we will be faced with an­i­mals un­able to be prop­er­ly pre­pared and there­fore at high­er risk of in­jury as they are asked to stretch out in dis­tance. The au­thor­i­ties can­not al­low this to hap­pen. Our two-year-olds will short­ly be com­ing in­to the pad­dock from the farms, will they be asked to walk around these sur­faces? Ur­gent ac­tion is need­ed to source a reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply to avoid the all too fre­quent oc­cur­rence of this chal­lenge dur­ing the dry sea­son.

A few weeks ago, a ma­jor de­ci­sion was made which, if a lev­el play­ing field is to be achieved, must have pos­i­tive im­pli­ca­tions for the sport in this coun­try. The au­thor­i­ties are now al­low­ing Play Whe games to be played on a Sun­day. For ar­cha­ic rea­sons, this coun­try pre­vi­ous­ly dis­al­lowed all games of chance on a Sun­day, pre­sum­ably to pre­serve the solem­ni­ty of a Sun­day. This pro­hi­bi­tion al­so pre­vent­ed the Ari­ma Race Club from host­ing any horse races on a Sun­day. The laugh­able na­ture of this pro­hi­bi­tion is put in­to fo­cus when one con­sid­ers that most oth­er rac­ing ju­ris­dic­tions in the world, in­clud­ing Italy, per­mit horse rac­ing and gam­bling to take place on a Sun­day. Sub­ject to cor­rec­tion, I be­lieve in this coun­try, casi­nos (aka pri­vate mem­bers’ clubs) are al­lowed to open on Sun­days.

How­ev­er, with the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board now be­ing al­lowed to con­duct its game of chance on a Sun­day, the way must sure­ly be cleared for ARC to be­gin host­ing its race day on a Sun­day rather than on­ly be­ing able to race on a Sat­ur­day or a non-re­li­gious pub­lic hol­i­day. If it has not done so al­ready, ARC should im­me­di­ate­ly ap­proach the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty to se­cure the for­mal ap­proval re­quired to do so. It is long over­due.

Time for ac­tion is now and not just talk...talk..talk.