While the gov­ern­ment of T&T has re­ceived jus­ti­fied com­pli­ments for their ini­tial han­dling of the caron­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic over time, some of the en­thu­si­asm for their proac­tive ac­tions have been di­lut­ed by their con­ser­v­a­tive ap­proach to the re­open­ing of the econ­o­my.

In the be­gin­ning, it was clear that where they were in doubt, their ap­proach was to copy the ac­tions tak­en by over­seas au­thor­i­ties. This worked very well and based on all known sta­tis­tics, and notwith­stand­ing the low lev­el of test­ing that con­tin­ues to oc­cur, this coun­try ranks well ahead of many ri­val ter­ri­to­ries and cer­tain­ly ahead of most of the more de­vel­oped coun­tries.

Those coun­tries, which con­tin­ue to bat­tle with their own in­ci­dences of the virus, made the de­ci­sion to re­open their economies much faster than this gov­ern­ment. Is this be­cause they were reck­less or care­less about the health of their cit­i­zen? This is high­ly un­like­ly. Is it be­cause they are get­ting dif­fer­ent ad­vice from their med­ical ad­vis­ers than we are? This is high­ly un­like­ly. Is it be­cause the de­bil­i­tat­ing im­pact of the con­tin­ued clo­sure of their economies is greater than that in this coun­try? This is high­ly un­like­ly.

More like­ly is that these gov­ern­ments have de­cid­ed that the ad­di­tion­al risk as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­open­ing is worth it. More like­ly is that these gov­ern­ments be­lieve that a con­tin­ued con­ser­v­a­tive out­look is not in the best in­ter­est of any­one.

The rac­ing in­dus­try in T&T had been work­ing to­wards a June 19 re­sump­tion of the sport in this coun­try. From all in­di­ca­tions, the Ari­ma Race Club had con­sult­ed with many of its con­stituents, train­ers, jock­eys, own­ers, grooms etc and us­ing the many ex­am­ples of coun­tries around the world that had re­sumed their rac­ing – be­hind closed doors – had sub­mit­ted sim­i­lar pro­pos­als to the rel­e­vant health of­fi­cials and line min­is­ter.

That the pro­pos­als would have been sum­mar­i­ly dis­missed with­out any due dis­cus­sion is in­deed very un­for­tu­nate and in­di­cates the lack of ap­pre­ci­a­tion by those in au­thor­i­ty for the sport. Horse rac­ing em­ploys al­most 1,500 in­di­vid­u­als who de­pend on the sport for their liveli­hood. Many of these in­di­vid­u­als, in tan­dem with their fel­low cit­i­zens, have been earn­ing very lit­tle if any in­come for the last two months.

Horse rac­ing can safe­ly take place be­hind closed doors. This has been ev­i­denced in every coun­try in which the sport has been tak­ing place and in all of those in which it has re­cent­ly re­sumed af­ter all be­ing locked down for some pe­ri­od. It could be that Trinidad’s suc­cess­ful past has re­sult­ed in those in­volved in mak­ing the de­ci­sions now be­liev­ing that they are in­fal­li­ble but such hubris would be very mis­lead­ing.

It could not have helped that the usu­al in­fight­ing and back bit­ing in the sport reared its head over the last cou­ple of weeks with the chair­man of the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty re­port­ed­ly mak­ing com­ments re - the re­sump­tion - and some jour­nal­ists ap­par­ent­ly do­ing their best to high­light rea­sons why the sport should not re­sume. This con­tin­ued pet­ti­ness around an is­sue in which the en­tire rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty should be unit­ed is dis­ap­point­ing, even if not sur­pris­ing.

It is not too late, how­ev­er, for this mat­ter to be made right. There are still over two weeks be­fore the date that was ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for re­sump­tion and if there is a will, there is still a way for this to hap­pen. The med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty needs to be sat­is­fied that the risk posed is ex­treme­ly low, in fact no more than the risk posed with most of the oth­er ar­eas that are be­ing re­opened.

Horse rac­ing is not a con­tact sport so that makes it even eas­i­er for the sport to re­sume. The Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed some em­pa­thy for the casi­no work­ers and try­ing to fig­ure out some way in which they could re­sume their op­er­a­tions. Casi­nos are con­sid­er­ably more risky than horse rac­ing when it comes to close con­tact since peo­ple must vis­it the casi­nos for it to make sense.

If the Prime Min­is­ter’s ob­jec­tive was to get the casi­no work­ers out to their jobs, pa­tron’s use of the au­to­mat­ed ma­chines won’t achieve that. Al­most all of those in­volved in horse rac­ing, ex­cept for race day staff such as tellers, would be able to re­sume their em­ploy­ment with rac­ing be­hind closed doors. The onus will be on the ARC to ex­pand their on­line bet­ting op­tions but one hope they have been do­ing that over the weeks of lock­down.

Rac­ing al­so mourns the pass­ing of the af­fa­ble Rolf Bar­to­lo who passed away on Sun­day. Rolfie, as he was pop­u­lar­ly known, was a favourite around the tracks be­cause his hors­es al­ways tried their best and in the last two years, his for­tunes had im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly with many good win­ners in­clud­ing the likes of Si­mon Pe­ter.

Rolf nev­er had a bad word to say about any­one and his tow­er­ing pres­ence around the track will be missed. His smile even in the face of all the ad­ver­si­ty in rac­ing and his greet­ing on a Sun­day will long be missed by all in the sport. May his soul "Rest in Peace".