For one rea­son or the oth­er, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has had a greater im­pact on the 2021 rac­ing sea­son than it had on the 2020 rac­ing sea­son.

There have been sev­en rac­ing days for the sea­son to date, and as­sum­ing an Oc­to­ber re­sump­tion, there is like­ly at most to be an­oth­er six rac­ing days bring the to­tal rac­ing days to 13, maybe 14 if an­oth­er rac­ing day is eked out some­where.

There were 22 rac­ing days in 2020. With no rac­ing for the past five months, the Clas­sic di­ary be­ing com­plet­ed torn up, the fit­ness of hors­es com­plete­ly un­known, and prize mon­ey still un­cer­tain, it is hard to be op­ti­mistic about the sport’s fu­ture.  

Giv­en the re­cent pro­nounce­ments by the gov­ern­ment, and in the hope that noth­ing changes over the next few weeks, it is like­ly that rac­ing will be al­lowed to re­sume on Oc­to­ber 9 un­der the strict con­di­tions as a vac­ci­na­tion safe zone.  The Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) has been ready­ing it­self for such a pos­si­bil­i­ty and so that con­di­tion is un­like­ly to be an is­sue.

With the re­sump­tion of an abridged sea­son, the big ques­tion was the fu­ture of the Clas­sic races. The Club has ad­dressed that ques­tion by in­di­cat­ing ap­par­ent­ly that there is a strong in­ten­tion it would be can­celling the sec­ond leg of the ‘Triple Crown’ – the Mid­sum­mer Clas­sic.  

In many ways, con­cep­tu­al­ly, the Club had al­ready made a mis­step when they de­cid­ed that the sec­ond leg would be run off on the turf track, a sig­nif­i­cant move­ment away from the tra­di­tion of the ‘Triple Crown’. That de­ci­sion is now void­ed by the de­ci­sion to can­cel the race al­to­geth­er if it stands the test of stake­hold­ers’ chal­lenges.

Giv­en the fact that the three ‘Triple Crown’ races would now be re­quired to be run off over three months, can­cel­la­tion of one is not en­tire­ly sur­pris­ing. What is some­what sur­pris­ing is the de­ci­sion to re­place the Clas­sic with the Der­by it­self. This means that the Guineas over 1,800 me­tres will be run off on Oc­to­ber 30 ac­cord­ing to the draft sched­ule pro­posed if not fi­nalised. We have been in­formed that the Der­by will be now runoff on No­vem­ber 27 over 2,000m. Based on cor­re­spon­dence seen by this writer, the de­ci­sion to run the Der­by on No­vem­ber 27 was tak­en to make room for the lo­cal three-year-olds to com­pete in the Gold Cup on Box­ing Day (De­cem­ber 26).

When com­ing up with a rac­ing pro­gramme, the pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion has to be the wel­fare of the hors­es. There will be on­ly one rac­ing day be­fore the 1,800m Guineas is run off and there would be about four months since the hors­es have last raced. To ask young hors­es to com­pete over that dis­tance at this point in their ca­reers is far from ide­al but to com­pound the sit­u­a­tion by ask­ing them to come back less than one month lat­er and com­pete in the Der­by over 2,000m bor­ders on the in­sane.

The ra­tio­nale be­ing put for­ward of leav­ing room for the hors­es to com­pete in the Gold Cup against more hard­ened cam­paign­ers is al­so ex­treme­ly in­con­sid­er­ate of these an­i­mals. While the first sit­u­a­tion may be un­avoid­able if the ob­jec­tive is to stage as many legs of the ‘Triple Crown’ as pos­si­ble, the sec­ond is cer­tain­ly not.

Most of the cur­rent race fans would be well aware that for a very long time, the Trinidad Der­by was ac­tu­al­ly runoff on the same day as the Gold Cup (in its var­i­ous names) for a long time in the his­to­ry of the sport.

While the ob­jec­tive of hav­ing three-year-olds com­pete in both the Der­by and the Gold Cup is laud­able, the well-be­ing of the hors­es, as op­posed to their own­ers, should re­al­ly be the main ob­jec­tive of any de­ci­sion tak­en with re­spect to race fram­ing. This de­ci­sion does not ap­pear to do that.

In 2020, even though the Der­by was staged on No­vem­ber 28, 2020, none of the lead­ing three-year-olds elect­ed to run in the Gold Cup on De­cem­ber 26, 2020, with con­nec­tions of all of the three-year-olds de­cid­ing to com­pete in the Breed­ers Clas­sic (over 1,800m in­stead).

While that event was re­moved from the 2021 Clas­sic di­ary, the 2020 ex­pe­ri­ence makes it clear that con­nec­tions of the lo­cal­ly bred three-year-olds would elect to not com­pete in the Gold Cup if there was an al­ter­na­tive be­cause of the sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tage in terms of phys­i­cal and men­tal readi­ness for their charges. And that was af­ter 22 days of rac­ing and two months of rac­ing lost be­tween April and May 2020, as op­posed to five months of rac­ing lost be­tween May and Sep­tem­ber 2021.

It is dif­fi­cult to be­lieve that all of those in­volved in the sport, own­ers, train­ers, and ad­min­is­tra­tors, could be­lieve that the de­ci­sion with re­spect to the re­main­ing ‘Triple Crown’ races is in the best in­ter­est of the hors­es. Hope­ful­ly, it is not too late for the ARC to re­view this de­ci­sion and re­vise it ac­cord­ing­ly.  

One al­ter­na­tive would be to push back the stag­ing of the Guineas to No­vem­ber (pos­si­bly the first rac­ing day in the month) and stage the Der­by on Box­ing Day.  This would give the lo­cal­ly bred three-year-olds an ex­tra rac­ing day to get ready for the first Clas­sic and more days in be­tween that first Clas­sic and the Der­by.