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Monday, July 7, 2025

Danc­ing Brave

Another great chance goes to waste

by

20150415

A farce, a dis­grace, a trav­es­ty, the worst de­ba­cle in the his­to­ry of horse rac­ing in this coun­try. Those are just some of the words used to de­scribe the end to what was sup­posed to be a great day of rac­ing on East­er Mon­day.

That the trav­es­ty should take place in the biggest race of the day, and be­fore a packed hol­i­day crowd must on­ly add to the shame that was brought up­on the sport. For us to un­der­stand the de­ba­cle, we must iso­late the var­i­ous play­ers in this tra­gi-com­e­dy.

It is re­port­ed that starter Carl­ton Ram­sa­roop claimed he was asked to change the se­quence for en­ter­ing the hors­es in­to the stalls. The stew­ards' re­port in­di­cates that hors­es were en­tered in the fol­low­ing se­quence: 1 & 5, 3 & 6, 2 & 4, and fi­nal­ly 7 & 8. This rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant de­par­ture from es­tab­lished prac­tice of ei­ther even num­bers then odd num­bers or vice ver­sa.

In many coun­tries, there are vari­a­tions in­volv­ing split­ting the num­bers in two and then en­ter­ing in that se­quence, for ex­am­ple, the hors­es could have been en­tered 1 & 5, 2 & 6, 3 & 7 and then 4 & 8. The se­quence that the starter was in­struct­ed to en­ter the hors­es de­fies all log­ic.

Hav­ing ac­qui­esced to the re­quest, the starter dis­played a com­plete lack of judge­ment in as­sess­ing what was tak­ing place. The prob­lems re­al­ly be­gan when the as­sis­tants at­tempt­ed to load 2 & 4. Root of Jesse (#4) has a his­to­ry of giv­ing trou­ble.

The an­i­mal en­tered the stalls rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly how­ev­er, but the starter was on no­tice re: his un­ease in the stalls. That the starter then al­lowed an in­or­di­nate amount of time to elapse be­fore load­ing #2 (Hail the Chief) and this was sim­ply un­ac­cept­able. Root of Jesse be­came up­set by the de­lay and no one paid any no­tice. All this time, one of the favourites–Blue Tequi­la (#5) who had been loaded first was be­ing asked to stand pa­tient­ly in the stalls. This could not have been to the fil­ly's ben­e­fit re­gard­less of the even­tu­al with­draw­al.

The hors­es least im­pact­ed by this de­lay were the num­bers 7 (War Mak­er) and 8 (Serengeti) both trained like the #2 by John O'Brien. Af­ter Root of Jesse flipped his cool and with it took out Blue Tequi­la, the sit­u­a­tion did not end. Serengeti who was wait­ing, be­gan her own an­tics.

Un­wise­ly, the starters' as­sis­tant then de­cid­ed to load the fil­ly from the front of the stall on­ly to lose con­trol and see her run around the track rid­er­less. A third horse hav­ing to be with­drawn. Not re­port­ed by the Stew­ards, but sworn to by all who were close to the start­ing stalls, is the fact that horse #1 (Le­gal Ad­vi­sor) who was al­so be­com­ing rest­less in the stalls (to the ex­tent that it was er­ro­neous­ly thought that he was al­so be­ing with­drawn) was forced to stand in the stalls with the ear twitch on and even had those on when the stalls opened.

The jock­ey had to try to re­move the twitch which on­ly fell off about 50 me­tres in­to the race. This must have af­fect­ed the chances of this light­ly raced colt. What would have hap­pened with­out all of these er­rors–who knows?

The first mis­take has to be in the load­ing se­quence and the time has come for peo­ple to be held ac­count­able for the er­rors that they make. From the re­port of the Stew­ards it does not ap­pear that there was any ac­tions tak­en against any in­di­vid­ual with the ob­vi­ous in­fer­ence be­ing that the Stew­ards be­lieved that what oc­curred was just one of those things and there­fore tough luck for the con­nec­tions of the four hors­es who were most ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.

This per­spec­tive just con­tin­ues the to­tal dis­re­gard for the sport and the in­di­vid­u­als who keep the sport alive. But then again, can we re­al­ly be sur­prised at the con­tin­ued in­com­pe­tence?

In April 2014, amend­ments made to the Rules of Rac­ing gov­ern­ing the sport were gazette and there­fore came in­to ef­fect. In ad­di­tion to a num­ber of nom­i­nal ad­just­ments, there was the sig­nif­i­cant change in the sex al­lowance award­ed to fil­lies from 2kg to 3kg.

These changes had in fact been ap­proved by the Board of the TTRA since Jan­u­ary 2014. How could it be that a change as fun­da­men­tal as this one, which be­came law af­ter it was gazetted could have been missed un­til eight months lat­er? That speaks to in­com­pe­tence.

No ex­pla­na­tion has been pro­vid­ed. It should be not­ed that this change has its greater im­pact on the races list­ed in the clas­sic di­ary in which the weight for sex al­lowance be­tween colts and fil­lies are most im­por­tant. For ex­am­ple, the Trinidad Der­by, the sec­ond and third place fin­ish­ers, Princess Pop­star and Glo­ri­ous Coun­try raced with 1 kg more than they should have. Would this have af­fect­ed the re­sult–who knows?

Ur­gent ac­tion is re­quired by the au­thor­i­ties but it is like­ly that these pleas will once again fall on deaf ears.


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