The Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) In­de­pen­dence Day sev­en-race card has been can­celled due to the lack of ap­proval from the Min­istry of Health. Pres­i­dent of the ARC Robert Bernard con­firmed on Sun­day for Guardian Me­dia Sports.

He told Guardian Me­dia Sport that the Min­istry of Health and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al stat­ed that with the coro­n­avirus (Covid-19) pan­dem­ic re­stric­tion and pro­to­cols cur­rent­ly in place it means that rac­ing would not be al­lowed.

Since Au­gust 15th when the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Ho­n­ourable Kei­th Row­ley ad­dressed the na­tion dur­ing a Min­istry of Health press con­fer­ence from the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, in St Ann's, he an­nounced the lock­down mea­sures. And on Sat­ur­day in the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health, he in­ti­mat­ed that the sys­tem re­stricts pub­lic gath­er­ings, the ces­sa­tion of in-house din­ing and the clo­sure of beach­es and rivers among oth­er mea­sures. These mea­sures were put in­to ef­fect on Au­gust 17th for the 28 days.

This is an­oth­er his­toric mark in rac­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as the coun­try cel­e­brates its 58th Year of In­de­pen­dence to­day.

Rac­ing is run and man­aged by the Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB), who pri­ma­ry col­lects the tax­es on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment and re-dis­trib­ute part of those pro­ceeds back to the sport through par­tial fi­nanc­ing of the purs­es. Feed­back from the Bet­ting Levy Board in­di­cates that, in the pan­dem­ic en­vi­ron­ment, they are al­so re­quired to pro­vide a bet­ting li­cense to the ARC each week so that races can take place, while the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) is re­spon­si­ble for the over­all ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport and dis­pute res­o­lu­tion and the ARC is re­spon­si­ble for the host­ing of the races and the main­te­nance of the fa­cil­i­ties to be used. The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try is the line min­istry re­spon­si­ble for the sport, as op­posed to the Min­istry of Sport.

The ARC had planned an ex­cit­ing day's pro­gramme which would have fea­tured an es­ti­mat­ed 90 hors­es which in­clud­ed the fea­ture event, the Grade One - In­de­pen­dence Cup over 1,800 me­tres on the turf track at San­ta Rosa Park.

How­ev­er, with the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day, there are 23,530 sam­ples of which 1,691 are pos­i­tive cas­es with 998 be­ing ac­tive. To date, 21 per­sons have died. The Min­istry has dis­charged 672 in­di­vid­u­als.

The Horse Of The Year 2019 Juice Man was set to con­tin­ue his win­ning ways in the $50,000 purse event. This event would have al­so marked the first run on the turf track for Juice Man, along with three of the John O'Brien chal­lengers in the event, name­ly, Apoc­a­lypse, Mak­ing Head­lines and the Jer­ry Narace owned Gen­er­al JN.

This is just an­oth­er set­back fol­low­ing the Au­gust 21 when the Ad­min­is­tra­tive Build­ing of the (ARC) at San­ta Rosa Park, Ari­ma, was al­leged to have been fire­bombed.

The build­ing which housed the Ad­min­is­tra­tive Build­ing was de­stroyed.

The next race day is card­ed for Sep­tem­ber 12th and this could al­so be in trou­ble al­so, with the end of the first 28th day of the new lock­down phase set to end on Sep­tem­ber 14th.