As all sport in Trinidad and To­ba­go has been cur­tailed by the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, Horse rac­ing which was al­ready fac­ing tough times, has now been dealt a fur­ther blow with no rac­ing tak­ing place.

“I've been mon­i­tor­ing not on­ly horse rac­ing but all ar­eas un­der my port­fo­lio in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing and busi­ness but cer­tain­ly I'm look­ing at horse rac­ing. COVID-19 is quite un­usu­al it has been thrust up­on the world and horse rac­ing like many oth­er in­dus­tries and sports has been af­fect­ed, not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go but cer­tain­ly all across the Caribbean and it has im­pact­ed across the World,” said Gopee-Scoon, the

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try who spoke with An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on Is­ports on i95.5fm pro­gramme on Sat­ur­day night.

Goop­ie-Scoon al­so shared her con­cerns about the in­fight­ing that is tak­ing place in the sport and on a way for­ward. T&T's lead­ing own­er/ train­er Harold Chadee al­so ex­pressed his con­cerns with what is hap­pen­ing in the in­dus­try.

“Rac­ing is not alone, but al­so rac­ing has not been with­out is­sues and prob­lems for decades and we have to ad­dress this over and over again. Those in­volved in the in­dus­try, have to deal with it as well, it is not go­ing away. You just have to deal with the re­al­i­ty of the im­pact of COVID-19 on horse rac­ing," ex­plained Gopee-Scoon

Asked about the de­lay in get­ting the Gam­ing Bill pass de­spite the many promis­es of the gov­ern­ment, Gopee-Scoon re­spond­ed, “Well the Gam­ing bill should have been passed, but we nev­er had the sup­port of the op­po­si­tion when they were in of­fice. This is the very bill that they had put out and con­struct­ed, now it is an­oth­er as­pect, it has tak­en a dif­fer­ent turn, so we would like the sup­port of the op­po­si­tion, so you would do well for board mem­bers of the in­dus­try who are in­volved with the op­po­si­tion and stuff, and let them know that every­body needs to get on board."

Re­gard­ing the con­cern of the 1,300 – 1,400 per­sons who are in­volved in the sport who are now out of work, the Min­is­ter said, “Of course, they can ben­e­fit as well from the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry’s as­sis­tance pro­gramme, it has been ad­ver­tised, it is pub­lished in the news­pa­pers quite of­ten and it is avail­able to those in­volved in the in­dus­try, who are af­fect­ed, so whether it is on a self-em­ployed ba­sis, whether it is on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis, you can em­ploy with em­ploy­ees at the min­istry of so­cial de­vel­op­ment in terms of the re­lease in terms of the grant of $1,500.”

<Clash­es be­tween the ARC, BLB and TTRA>

With re­gards to the al­leged con­stant in­fight­ing be­tween the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC), the Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon said,“There­in lies the prob­lem, if you want to save the in­dus­try. In my view this is not new, this has been go­ing on for decades and there­fore, it is for the stake­hold­ers and I have tried on many oc­ca­sions to bring the stake­hold­ers to­geth­er and this is go­ing out on a limb, as you know gov­ern­ment, there are two re­lat­ed agen­cies which we deal with, the TTRA which reg­u­lates the in­dus­try and the Bet­ting Levy Board which man­ages. Now, the ARC is a pri­vate con­cern, but in the in­ter­est of rac­ing, I have brought all mem­bers to­geth­er and ex­alt­ed the im­por­tance of good stake­hold­er in­ter­ac­tion, plan­ning as well, hav­ing a plan go­ing for­ward and the val­ue and im­por­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tion. There is no doubt about it that mem­bers have not lis­tened and they have not heed­ed the call for close col­lab­o­ra­tion and co­op­er­a­tion. Very dis­ap­point­ing, but if you want to save rac­ing and save the day in rac­ing. Many peo­ple do en­joy it and if you want to im­prove it or bring it back any­where near to the glo­ry days that it was, then it needs col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

She fur­ther added: “I have no di­rect in­flu­ence over the pri­vate en­ti­ty, Ari­ma Race Club but on oc­ca­sion, I have had dis­cus­sions with them, they have to col­lab­o­rate, in all three in­sti­tu­tions, so be­yond that, there are var­i­ous oth­er in­sti­tu­tions, the jock­eys as­so­ci­a­tion, the breed­ers as­so­ci­a­tion and so on, they all need to co­op­er­ate if rac­ing is go­ing to sur­vive at all.”

Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon point­ed out that, "Horse rac­ing is a very very small fra­ter­ni­ty, so all of this con­flict and so on is not nec­es­sary. I will be re-ex­am­in­ing and close­ly mon­i­tor­ing. I don’t al­ways want to speak to the press about it be­cause it is not nec­es­sary to stir up con­tro­ver­sy, it is not nec­es­sary to bring your Min­is­ter in­to every as­pect of it as well.”

With re­gards to the mat­ter that the Ari­ma Race Club had tak­en bets over the East­er Week­end, the Min­is­ter said, “The TTRA is de­signed to deal with those sort of mat­ters…well, it should not have hap­pened in the first place. I would like to think it would not hap­pen again, or else it would be tak­en to an­oth­er lev­el. I am telling you di­rec­tions have been giv­en by the TTRA and the Bet­ting Levy Board.”

<ARC owes Chadee over $1 mil­lion>

Mean­while, the lead­ing train­er Harold Chadee, who was al­so a guest on the show said that be­fore the COVID-19 re­stric­tions came in­to ef­fect he had 38 hors­es un­der his care and now he has on­ly 18. "I am owed over TT$1 mil­lion dol­lars from the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) in stakes be­cause they are now pay­ing out Day 20 or Day 21 of 39 race days from 2019. So un­less that mon­ey comes through there are many train­ers and oth­ers, not on­ly me, who will be in trou­ble if stakes are not paid. Peo­ple are not go­ing to come back to rac­ing and fans are not go­ing come to see races. When you lose an own­er that own­er is not go­ing to buy back a horse.”

Chadee, the fa­ther of the Cham­pi­on Own­er 2019 Dave Chadee, is call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to as­sist the sports is is dubbed the - Sports of Kings. He said, "The Bet­ting Levy Board gave them ARC up to Day 24, the Bet­ting Levy Board is in ar­rears of to the ARC from 24 to 39, which is 15 days plus the eight days for this year. If the ARC gets that 23 days from the Bet­ting Levy Board in a tranche, then the ARC will be able to pay some bills so that the own­ers will be able to get some mon­ey out of that to con­tin­ue to take care of the stock and paly some bills.”

Chadee said, "I am call­ing for the gov­ern­ment to step in now be­cause all the pools are close and there are no tax­es to be col­lect­ed. There is no mon­ey com­ing in, there is no cash flow. We need help be­cause of COVID-19. Fur­ther to that if we get as­sis­tance or an­oth­er grant to help with the ef­fects of the loss of rev­enue. I think we will be able to sur­vive.”