All ath­letes need to be fit; this is as true for the equine ath­lete as it is for the hu­man ath­lete. In T&T, it seems that our sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors be­lieve that fit­ness is all rel­a­tive and while that might clear­ly suf­fice for in­ter­nal com­pe­ti­tion, time and time again, the fal­la­cy of that be­lief is proven on the in­ter­na­tion­al land­scape.

While there is am­ple over­seas ev­i­dence that there are train­ers who can get their hors­es race fit af­ter long ab­sences through gal­lops, those tend to be the ex­cep­tion rather than the rule. For the av­er­age race­horse and un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, no amount of gal­lops can get a race­horse fit.. on­ly a race can tru­ly do that.

It is for this rea­son, that the cur­rent Ari­ma Race Club (ARC ) pol­i­cy of ap­prox­i­mate­ly one race day per month is stymieing the true po­ten­tial of many of this coun­try’s race­hors­es. This po­ten­tial in­hibit­ing ap­proach is no more ev­i­dent than in the coun­try’s three-year-old rac­ing crop.

Not on­ly is the one race day a month lim­it­ing from a fit­ness per­spec­tive, giv­en the clas­sic dis­tances tend to be 1,600 me­tres and longer, when the three-year-old gen­er­a­tion does get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to race, in­evitably they on­ly have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­test races over the clas­sic dis­tances in the clas­sics them­selves. This fur­ther lim­i­ta­tion has widened the gulf be­tween hors­es who make it to the race­track as two-year-olds and those who don’t. The com­bi­na­tion of these two lim­i­ta­tions has re­sult­ed, in the last few years, of the two-year-old leader al­so be­com­ing the three-year-old leader even if sub­se­quent­ly they prove un­able to com­pete with their old­er coun­ter­parts.

It has been ap­par­ent for some time that fit­ness rather than abil­i­ty is the cru­cial de­ter­mi­nant of suc­cess on the lo­cal race track, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the clas­sic races. The so­lu­tion for this chal­lenge is a dif­fi­cult one but it might be nec­es­sary for the lo­cal sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors to be­come more imag­i­na­tive. One such op­tion would be to change the dis­tances of the clas­sic. We all know the ori­gins of the clas­sics, and we all know that all the in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al corol­lar­ies are con­test­ed over dis­tances in ex­cess of 1,600m but the con­text for those com­par­a­tives is not the same as in T&T.

We should ex­plore run­ning our clas­sics over short­er dis­tances with pos­si­bly the Der­by in Sep­tem­ber be­ing con­test­ed over the fur­ther dis­tance of 1,750m. The top three-year-olds can then con­tin­ue to progress over fur­ther dis­tances with a view to their con­test­ing the Gold Cup over the 2,000m dis­tance in De­cem­ber. Push­ing our three-year-olds to con­test the 2,000m dis­tance in Sep­tem­ber has de­stroyed many of the bet­ter hors­es. This would be rad­i­cal for this coun­try and this coun­try is not known for its rad­i­cal­ism, but it is nec­es­sary.

Our two-year-olds should not race be­yond 1,200m and our first clas­sic should not be fur­ther than 1,350m (which was ac­tu­al­ly the East­er Guineas dis­tance for decades in the 70s, 80s and 90s). The Mid­sum­mer Clas­sic could then be 1,500m on the turf with the Der­by be­ing con­test­ed at the 1,750m dis­tance. This grad­ual length­en­ing of the clas­sic dis­tances will at least al­low our three-year-olds to build up their fit­ness in an en­vi­ron­ment in which they can on­ly race once a month while con­tribut­ing to the length­en­ing of their rac­ing ca­reers (some­thing the coun­try’s rac­ing pop­u­la­tion des­per­ate­ly needs).

An idea that we can con­sid­er to build the fit­ness of our hors­es is the in­tro­duc­tion of bar­ri­er tri­als in this coun­try. Bar­ri­er tri­als are es­sen­tial­ly race gal­lops for un­raced two-year-olds for which no bet­ting takes place but the hors­es are placed un­der race con­di­tions. The ad­min­is­tra­tive costs as­so­ci­at­ed with stag­ing a race day will be avoid­ed but hors­es will be giv­en the chance to get much-need­ed fit­ness un­der race con­di­tions.

Coun­tries such as Aus­tralia and Ire­land use bar­ri­er tri­als quite suc­cess­ful­ly and in some cir­cum­stances they can even con­tribute to more in­ter­est on race days them­selves. These bar­ri­er tri­als them­selves can take place once a month maybe two weeks apart from an ac­tu­al race day. While the fo­cus will be on un­raced two-year-olds, giv­en our cir­cum­stances, we might al­so con­sid­er them for hors­es who have not raced for a min­i­mum pe­ri­od of time (in that way they can al­so be used for hors­es re­turn­ing from lay­offs). They are not bet­ting races so the hand­i­cap rat­ing of the an­i­mal is ir­rel­e­vant and all the bar­ri­er races will take place over dis­tances not ex­ceed­ing 800m so sprint­ers and stay­ers will come to­geth­er for one tri­al whose sole pur­pose is to con­tribute to the over­all fit­ness of the equine ath­lete.

The bot­tom line is that fit­ness counts and the ARC needs to ac­cept some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­sist train­ers in build­ing the fit­ness of their an­i­mals and work­ing with the fit­ness of the an­i­mals. Con­test­ing clas­sics over un­suit­able dis­tances does noth­ing for any­one and hav­ing bet­ting races with hors­es who are un­fit does not make for de­cent bet­ting turnovers. Help­ing oth­ers might just en­able the ARC to help it­self.

Horserac­ing needs a re­vival soon­er rather than lat­er.