The lat­est edi­tion of the Trinidad Der­by took place on Wednes­day (Sep­tem­ber 24) with an­oth­er small field of sev­en hors­es tak­ing part. Con­grat­u­la­tions must be ex­tend­ed to Di­ane and Pier­pont Scott, own­ers of our lat­est Triple Crown win­ner, Head­lin­er, as well as Ruthven Smith, the orig­i­nal own­er of the sire of Head­lin­er, Head­line News, who has be­come the dom­i­nant sire of clas­sic hors­es in this coun­try over the last decade.

The Scotts are two of the most like­able and trust­wor­thy per­sons that any­one will meet, gen­er­al­ly and the most sport­ing and rac­ing en­thu­si­asts in this coun­try. Their in­volve­ment in the sport in this coun­try ex­tends for over 50 years, not count­ing the years of par­tic­i­pa­tion of their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies, the Chins and the Scotts. Their suc­cess with Head­lin­er could not have been more rich­ly de­serv­ing. A bat­tle be­tween Head­lin­er and the oth­er cham­pi­on horse in T&T, Hel­lo World, in the Gold Cup in De­cem­ber should be a great race for all to look for­ward to.

With the Der­by be­hind us, it is once again time for the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC), in con­junc­tion with the gov­ern­ment of T&T, to put their heads to­geth­er to im­ple­ment ini­tia­tives that will car­ry the sport for­ward.

While no dis­re­spect is in­tend­ed to­wards Guyana, it is in­con­ceiv­able that the Guyana rac­ing in­dus­try could have over­tak­en ours. The sport in Guyana re­mains large­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed, with al­most any­thing go­ing on a dai­ly ba­sis, but the sport is still mov­ing for­ward and one day, the ad­min­is­tra­tors will get their act to­geth­er. One of the con­trib­u­tors to their growth is their open pol­i­cy with re­spect to the im­por­ta­tion of hors­es from neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, with many Brazil­ian hors­es now grac­ing the dirt in Guyana. At the same time, our reg­u­la­tors con­tin­ue to re­sist all at­tempts to open our shores to hors­es from Venezuela and Brazil. Why? What is the risk?

The ar­gu­ment used to re­volve around maybe dis­ease and in­fes­ta­tion of the lo­cal horse pop­u­la­tion. Con­sid­er­ing the small size of that pop­u­la­tion at present, it is a hard ar­gu­ment to main­tain. Maybe im­pact­ing oth­er an­i­mals in the coun­try can be a con­cern. How­ev­er, the ev­i­dence of that claim is min­i­mal and, in any event, all such pop­u­la­tions are very low.

Just the act of im­port­ing more hors­es, sourced more cheap­ly than what it would cost to bring any an­i­mals from the ap­proved ju­ris­dic­tions of the US and UK, would pro­vide a fil­lip to the lo­cal sport. It is quite sim­ply a Num­bers game and some­times those in med­i­cine may not be so in­clined but we have to trust and ex­plain that maths is as im­por­tant as car­ing.

You need big­ger race fields to gen­er­ate more turnover, which pro­vides the foun­da­tion for the rev­enue re­quired by the ARC.

The sec­ond ini­tia­tive that should not take too much to im­ple­ment is the re­moval of the tax on the lo­cal sport. This is the on­ly op­tion since ad­vo­cat­ing for an in­crease in tax­es on oth­er forms of gam­bling is fu­tile, bear­ing in mind that those oth­er forms of gam­bling, for the most part, hap­pen on the dark web (to use an in­ter­net anal­o­gy).

Un­til the au­thor­i­ties crack down on the il­le­gal gam­ing (a ma­jor re­quire­ment if we are to tru­ly ful­fil our oblig­a­tions un­der the FATF and CFATF guide­lines) tak­ing place in casi­nos (aka pri­vate mem­ber clubs) and the many for­eign-owned gro­ceries that have blos­somed around the coun­try, the on­ly way we can pro­tect the rac­ing in­dus­try is by re­mov­ing all tax­es on the lo­cal sport. It can­not be that very much is be­ing earned at present, giv­en the very low lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place. So why not re­move it in its en­tire­ty? All that would be re­quired is a waiv­er of the tax for an ini­tial pe­ri­od (say three years) and that could be an­nounced in the up­com­ing bud­get. It will en­able the ARC to im­prove pay­out to bet­tors and pro­vide an­oth­er boost for the sport.

The third ini­tia­tive, and again it would cost the coun­try noth­ing, is to re­lax the reg­u­la­tions with re­spect to ac­tiv­i­ty (sport­ing and oth­er­wise) on a Sun­day. Why are malls closed? Why are most restau­rants closed? Why does horse rac­ing not have Sun­day rac­ing as an op­tion? These con­cepts are out­dat­ed if they ever were in fash­ion. This is an easy and cost-free fix.

These three rec­om­men­da­tions – 1. Open up the coun­try to the im­por­ta­tion of hors­es from Venezuela and Brazil; 2. Re­move the tax­es on gam­bling on lo­cal horse rac­ing at the ARC and 3. Lift the re­stric­tion on eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in gen­er­al but if not, horse rac­ing in par­tic­u­lar, on a Sun­day – of­fer low-cost im­ple­mentable ac­tions that will move us out of our end­less talk par­a­digm.

Fi­nal­ly, this Sun­day, one of the pre­mier horse races on the in­ter­na­tion­al rac­ing cal­en­dar, the Prix de l’Arc de Tri­om­phe, will take place at Paris­Longchamp. Over 18 hors­es are ex­pect­ed to line up for the race with an in­ter­na­tion­al field com­pris­ing hors­es from Japan, Ire­land, Britain and France.

Joint favourites for the race are last year’s run­ner-up, Aven­ture, and the mul­ti­ple 2025 Oaks win­ning fil­ly, Min­nie Hauk – a daugh­ter of the great Frankel who has proven him­self to be a su­per sire as well. Aven­ture won one of the lead­ing preps for this race, the Prix Ver­meille, which was won by last year’s Arc win­ner, Blue­stock­ing. Min­nie Hauk is un­beat­en in 2025 and she won the Ep­som and York­shire Oaks, which rep­re­sents the path to Arc vic­to­ry tak­en by that oth­er great fil­ly, En­able.

The Japan­ese are rep­re­sent­ed by three hors­es – Croix du Nord, Byzan­tine Dream and Alo­hi Alii – who all won their prep races in Japan. This has hap­pened pre­vi­ous­ly but Japan is still look­ing for their first win­ner. Of the three, how­ev­er, Croix du Nord has been ex­cep­tion­al in Japan and I be­lieve he is the best of the Japan­ese.

Oth­er top con­tenders are Sosie and Kalpana, though the lat­ter lost her mar­ket-lead­ing po­si­tion, hav­ing been un­able to win any of her starts this year. Sosie was fourth in 2024 and was run­ner-up to Byzan­tine Dream in the Prix Foy, a race that has not been as strong a pro­duc­er of fu­ture Arc win­ners as many of the oth­er races, how­ev­er. The win­ner will come from one of these hors­es and I have on my own short­list Min­nie Hauk and Croix du Nord.

Best of luck to all!