As if the lo­cal horse rac­ing in­dus­try could not take any more body blows, the de­ci­sion to close the lo­cal horse rac­ing in­dus­try from March 28 has thrown the sport in­to a tail­spin.

T&T, like most oth­er rac­ing ju­ris­dic­tions, de­cid­ed to close doors com­plete­ly rather than con­tin­ue rac­ing be­hind closed doors. While the lat­ter brings with it a cer­tain amount of risk and con­tro­ver­sy, it was nev­er a re­al op­tion for small­er coun­tries such as ours. Ja­maica tried that for maybe one rac­ing day be­fore re­al­is­ing that it was not fea­si­ble.

It re­mains some­thing an enig­ma how Gulf­stream Park has con­tin­ued to host live horse rac­ing, al­beit with no spec­ta­tors. This is some­what re­flec­tive of the stance tak­en by the Re­pub­lic Gov­er­nor of the State, who seem­ing­ly shares many com­mon views with the US pres­i­dent. No one is im­mune from the virus and so­cial dis­tanc­ing should mean so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

As we talk on so­cial dis­tanc­ing, the ter­ri­ble rac­ing news last week of the pass­ing of leg­endary jock­ey Venice “Pap­py” Richards send mas­sive shock waves all over this coun­try and left many in tears. And a num­ber try­ing to dis­tance them­selves from blame. What made it worst were the re­port­ed con­di­tions that Richards left this world in, giv­en all of his im­mense con­tri­bu­tion to the sport.

We will all await the ex­pla­na­tions from Mr David Kan­ga­loo, the chair­man of the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) on why some of the funds from the –Benev­o­lent Fund – was not used to as­sist him and from the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC), who could not af­ford to pay him, even though they have been with­out an ac­coun­tant for months.

The is­sue as it re­lates to COVID-19 for the ARC, how­ev­er, is what hap­pens next and what hap­pens when the in­dus­try can re-open. Will, it re-open? We have al­ready seen nu­mer­ous re­ports of an ex­o­dus of hors­es from the pad­dock which sug­gests that the horse pop­u­la­tion has al­ready re­duced sub­stan­tial­ly.

Based on the re­stric­tions be­ing placed on the ac­tiv­i­ties of the train­ers, jock­eys, ex­er­cise rid­ers and hors­es, it is high­ly like­ly that any de­ci­sion to re­sume will re­quire some built-in lead time for the hors­es to be prop­er­ly read­ied for their next races.

When we con­sid­er the move­ment of far­ri­ers, feed­stock providers, and oth­er sup­port ser­vice providers are like­ly to be equal­ly lim­it­ed dur­ing this pe­ri­od, it is dif­fi­cult to en­vis­age rac­ing re­sum­ing with­in any­thing less than two months of the lift­ing of so­cial dis­tanc­ing re­stric­tions.

This has se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the many in­di­vid­u­als who are em­ployed by the sport since the ques­tion aris­es as to how their em­ploy­ment is to be main­tained.

Those most af­fect­ed are like­ly to be the jock­eys whose in­come is based on a per­cent­age of their mount’s win­nings, a rid­ing fee and an ex­er­cise fee. The third of those might con­tin­ue to the ex­tent train­ers can main­tain some lev­el of ex­er­cise for their charges but it is sure to be much re­duced as, in this un­cer­tain pe­ri­od, it makes more sense for train­ers to ease back on their charges’ prepa­ra­tions.

The grooms are al­so like­ly to be af­fect­ed but pri­mar­i­ly by the re­duc­tion in the num­ber of hors­es in the pad­dock with a trick­le-down ef­fect on the num­ber of grooms re­quired. While train­ers will con­tin­ue to earn train­ing fees, few­er hors­es will trans­late in­to low­er fees and there will be no per cent of earn­ings to look for­ward to.

Own­ers are like­ly to be least af­fect­ed since they were al­ready not be­ing paid any win­nings of their charges go­ing back to the mid­dle of last year. The fate of the staff of the ARC is un­known though it can be ex­pect­ed that those who pri­mar­i­ly are em­ployed on race days will al­so be with­out some sort of in­come at the mo­ment.

Like the coun­try, the in­dus­try is ill-equipped at this point to pro­vide any mean­ing­ful sup­port to any of those who find them­selves with sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced or no in­come. The un­cer­tain­ty over how long this sit­u­a­tion will per­sist must on­ly be adding to the an­guish of the many af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.

One is left to won­der whether we, there­fore, have the quin­tes­sen­tial un­solv­able prob­lem.

So many peo­ple for whom in­come lost can nev­er be re­cov­ered. So many peo­ple that will now de­pend on the gen­eros­i­ty of oth­ers for their dai­ly sur­vival. Un­der­neath the blus­ter, how­ev­er, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are gen­er­ous peo­ple and it is un­like­ly that how­ev­er re­duced one’s stan­dard of liv­ing may be­come, any­one will be re­duced to liv­ing in pover­ty.

Now is cer­tain­ly the time for all of those who can in the in­dus­try, to come to­geth­er and do, with­out wait­ing on the gov­ern­ment (Bet­ting Levy Board - BLB) to step in. They are most prob­a­bly un­able to do so to the ex­tent tru­ly re­quired.

Again in clos­ing, we must pay our re­spect to Venice “Pap­py” Richards who passed away on March 30. Pap­py, as he was fond­ly known, was one of the best jock­eys to ride in the Caribbean ever and will for­ev­er be con­sid­ered as an icon of the turf. He prac­tised his art pri­mar­i­ly be­tween T&T and Bar­ba­dos and en­joyed tremen­dous suc­cess in both coun­tries.

His name will for­ev­er be as­so­ci­at­ed with some of the great hors­es of Caribbean rac­ing and some of the many Hall of Famers who passed away be­fore him. A gen­tle­man off the track, Pap­py spent the last few years of his life in T&T and was al­ways will­ing to share his knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence with any­one who so de­sired. May his soul rest in peace!