A lot has been writ­ten over the years about what the Ari­ma Race Club can do to re­vive the lo­cal sport with in­ad­e­quate at­ten­tion paid to what the oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies can do. There are es­sen­tial­ly three reg­u­la­tors for the sport of kings in Trinidad (There is no horse rac­ing in To­ba­go).

The three reg­u­la­tors are the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC), the Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB) and the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA).

The first point to note is that while the Board of the ARC is vol­un­tary, the Boards of the oth­er two en­ti­ties are state boards that are ap­point­ed and the mem­bers are paid by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.

How­ev­er, what is in­ter­est­ing is that un­like oth­er state boards such as TSTT, NGC and NFM etc, it ap­pears that there's no ac­count­abil­i­ty mea­sures for the Board of Di­rec­tors. Pay­ment with­out ac­count­abil­i­ty is usu­al­ly a recipe for dis­as­ter.

An­oth­er point to note with the com­po­si­tion of the var­i­ous boards is that there is rep­re­sen­ta­tion on those boards by de­funct rac­ing en­ti­ties in this coun­try. There is no longer any rac­ing in To­ba­go for more than a decade now and so the To­ba­go Race Club is a fal­la­cy (al­though it is un­der­stood that there is a size­able sum of mon­ey in the To­ba­go Race Club ac­count to date), like­wise, the Union Park Turf Club ceased to stage rac­ing in Mara­bel­la long be­fore the race­track was con­vert­ed to the Man­ny Ramjohn Sta­di­um.

Notwith­stand­ing their sta­tus as non-op­er­a­tional, both en­ti­ties are en­ti­tled to have rep­re­sen­ta­tion on these state boards. This is, of course, a di­rect re­sult of the ar­cha­ic leg­is­la­tion up­on which these state boards were found­ed (cir­ca the 1960s). Sure­ly some­one can see the flaw in this and move to re­vise the com­po­si­tion of the boards.

Hav­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion from en­ti­ties with no ac­tive in­volve­ment in horse rac­ing is like hav­ing no rep­re­sen­ta­tion since their views are mean­ing­less. Those in­di­vid­u­als should be asked to re­sign, and even if they can­not be re­placed be­cause of the leg­is­la­tion, at least the GOTT will save some board fees.

An­oth­er point to note is the ob­vi­ous con­flict of in­ter­est in hav­ing as Chair­man of the reg­u­la­tor, that is the TTRA, an en­ti­ty ap­point­ed by the GOTT, an in­di­vid­ual who is al­so an em­ploy­ee of the GOTT. And not just an or­di­nary em­ploy­ee ei­ther.

An em­ploy­ee whose pro­fes­sion has a di­rect im­pact on the suc­cess of the sport.

The con­flict aris­es since that per­son can't re­move his hat as a state vet­eri­nar­i­an when hav­ing to de­lib­er­ate over cru­cial is­sues for the sport it­self, even if in­trin­si­cal­ly he so de­sires.

One ex­am­ple of which is the cur­rent im­broglio over the vi­a­bil­i­ty of im­port­ing an­i­mals from Venezuela to boost the lo­cal horse pop­u­la­tion. Hors­es from Venezuela can trav­el to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and race fol­low­ing a quar­an­tine pe­ri­od but can­not come to Trinidad and race af­ter a rea­son­able quar­an­tine pe­ri­od.

Hors­es from Venezuela which placed first and sec­ond in the re­cent Clas­si­co del Caribe, re­flec­tive of the qual­i­ty of their stock notwith­stand­ing the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic woes. Un­con­firmed re­ports sug­gest that based on the neg­li­gi­ble val­ue of the Venezue­lan Bo­li­var, this coun­try would be able to dou­ble its horse pop­u­la­tion at a rel­a­tive­ly low cost if their hors­es were al­lowed in­to this coun­try. Con­cerns have been ex­pressed about the qual­i­ty of our quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties rel­a­tive to those in Mi­a­mi, USA but if that is a con­cern, then we can arrange to quar­an­tine the hors­es there – once it is for a rea­son­able pe­ri­od that is con­sis­tent with what the Unit­ed States laws would re­quire.

It will add to the cost but can be con­sid­ered as an in­ter­im mea­sure.

This ap­proach has been sug­gest­ed in some quar­ters but does not ap­pear to find favour with the TTRA Chair­man / Lead Coun­try Vet­eri­nar­i­an which if ac­cu­rate can lead many to ques­tion the ra­tio­nale. No one per­son in horserac­ing or sport gen­er­al­ly should be a law un­to them­selves. The re­main­der of the TTRA board may have no equal voice.

An­oth­er trav­es­ty is the open­ing of the Club for gam­bling on Sun­days.

The new leg­is­la­tion seems to al­low it but since that leg­is­la­tion re­mains stuck in the mud some­where, those with the req­ui­site au­thor­i­ty need to do like what is be­ing done with the new Mar­i­jua­na leg­is­la­tion and take a com­mon-sense ap­proach to Sun­day bet­ting in the in­ter­im.

If the phys­i­cal open­ing of bet­ting shops is a bridge too far for some, then at least al­low on­line gam­bling. This just re­quires a flick of a switch and the ARC will have ac­cess to a pre­vi­ous­ly closed av­enue for ad­di­tion­al rev­enue. This rev­enue is need­ed. Gam­bling on a Sun­day was pro­hib­it­ed in the Vic­to­ri­an age.

We are in the Eliz­a­bethan age. Eng­land, Scot­land, Ire­land, Spain, all coun­tries with stronger re­li­gious moor­ings than we ever had, and de­spite that gam­bling is al­lowed on Sun­days with phys­i­cal shops open. And fi­nal­ly, elec­tron­ic bet­ting is sure­ly a no brain­er.