As we be­gin a new decade, many rac­ing fans can be ex­cused for iden­ti­fy­ing the pri­or decade as the lost decade from the view­point of the horse rac­ing in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

A decade that opened very bright­ly in 2010 with the horse rac­ing in­dus­try in full flight. One of the best hors­es to grace these shores, Bruceon­th­eloose, was just about be­gin­ning his reign in this coun­try and all of the promi­nent own­ers such as Derek Chin, Ju­nior Sam­my, Shiv­am Ma­haraj, Mer­lin Sam­lals­ingh, the Poon Tips, the Ahamads, etc were in their full glo­ry. There was con­sid­er­able in­vest­ment in new rac­ing stock as own­ers com­pet­ed to have the best horse rac­ing in the coun­try. The Year­ling Sales was a high­ly com­pet­i­tive event and it was easy for four or five year­lings to ex­ceed the mag­ic $100,000 sell­ing price bar­ri­er. In 2011, Derek Chin arranged a Caribbean Rac­ing Cham­pi­onship with com­peti­tors from through­out the Caribbean de­scend­ing on Trinidad to com­pete, still the best day of horserac­ing.

In 2012, the $500,000 Trinidad and To­ba­go Breed­ers Clas­sic would be in­tro­duced and this would sig­nal a fur­ther rush in the de­mand for lo­cal­ly bred an­i­mals. How­ev­er, the good times were not to last.

In­fight­ing, jeal­ousy, pet­ti­ness and cor­rup­tion in the sport would dri­ve some of the promi­nent and faith­ful own­ers to ei­ther re­duce their sta­ble or get out of the sport al­to­geth­er.

Poor work eth­ic, ir­re­spon­si­ble race plan­ning and fram­ing, a bloat­ed ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture and high egos would dri­ve many of the lead­ing pro­fes­sion­als in the sport to search out their for­tune out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In­dif­fer­ence by the po­lit­i­cal class, a lack of vi­sion by the many rac­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors and in­creased com­pe­ti­tion from le­gal and il­le­gal gam­ing op­tions, with no penal­ties from the var­i­ous gov­ern­ments of the day would dri­ve the sport of horserac­ing to stag­nate.

Fi­nal­ly, the coun­try’s de­clin­ing eco­nom­ic for­tunes would pro­vide the prover­bial nail to seal the cof­fin on the sport’s fate. For the sport to go from its zenith to its nadir in 10 years was phe­nom­e­nal by any stan­dard.

At this stage, some will say that there is no way back for the sport and that may very well be true. It was an­nounced on Box­ing Day (Day #39) that stakes pay­ment for Day 12 would be made on that day De­cem­ber 26th.

It must be ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult for the av­er­age own­er and con­nec­tions (train­ers, grooms, jock­eys) to meet their day-to-day liv­ing ex­pens­es, let alone their rac­ing ex­pens­es. On the oth­er hand, the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) Pres­i­dent ex­pressed a lot of op­ti­mism dur­ing the me­dia event to launch the 2020 New Years Day card with­out any spe­cif­ic tan­gi­ble ev­i­dence to sup­port such op­ti­mism, oth­er than the fact that we all know he is a man with very good in­ten­tions.

One in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ment would ap­pear to be the plan to open up the mar­ket to Venezue­lan bred an­i­mals, a move that has long been tout­ed by many in the in­dus­try. Giv­en the in­flux of Venezue­lans in oth­er as­pects of Trinidad so­ci­ety, it was per­haps in­evitable that their hors­es would even­tu­al­ly find their way here. It is not clear whether these an­i­mals will be el­i­gi­ble to com­pete in the West In­di­an bred clas­sic races. What lies ahead though may en­tail se­ri­ous dis­cus­sions with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty.

While the move to al­low Venezue­lan bred hors­es in­to the coun­try is wel­come, there is still the small mat­ter of the fi­nances of the Club, which lim­it its abil­i­ty to re­ward those ex­pect­ed to in­vest in these hors­es on a time­ly ba­sis. Pub­lic ad­ver­tise­ments in­di­cate that the Club is at­tempt­ing to dis­pose of some of its sur­plus land as­sets.

Giv­en the Club’s ar­rears to most, it would seem that any pro­ceeds from this land sale would on­ly al­low it to clear ar­rears with­out pro­vid­ing any foun­da­tion for en­sur­ing that fu­ture pay­ments are com­plet­ed on a time­ly ba­sis.

This would, there­fore, rep­re­sent the prover­bial plas­ter.

The Club tru­ly needs to go back to ba­sics and be­gin where things went wrong dur­ing the last decade. It must find a way to re-en­gage with those own­ers and spon­sors that it has lost dur­ing that lost decade.

The Club’s man­age­ment to put pride aside and reach out to those own­ers and spon­sors should use the first two or three months of 2020.

Try to find out what it would take for them to be­come re-en­gaged and un­less it in­volves some­thing crim­i­nal, do it. One of the first steps would be to clean up the sport. Gam­bling is a game of chance and peo­ple can live with los­ing but they need to be­lieve that they had an even chance of be­ing suc­cess­ful. Those in the ad­min­is­tra­tion know what needs to be done but have buried their heads thus far. They need to raise their heads and take ac­tion if the sport is to have any chance must start now to wel­come in 2020 most pos­i­tive­ly.