Horse racing – the numbers game

Horse rac­ing is about gam­bling; gam­bling is about tak­ing risks; tak­ing risks is about op­tions; and op­tions are about quan­ti­ty (and some­times qual­i­ty).

​Peo­ple will bet on vir­tu­al­ly any­thing that can pos­si­bly hap­pen; the more op­tions there are, the bet­ter the like­ly odds on any par­tic­u­lar op­tion, and there­fore, the bet­ter the re­ward for suc­cess. This re­al­i­ty con­tin­ues to lie at the root of the chal­lenge fac­ing the horse rac­ing in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

​The Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) re­cent­ly re­leased its re­port on the num­ber of hors­es cur­rent­ly in train­ing in this coun­try, and it made for very de­press­ing read­ing. The re­port in­di­cat­ed that we have a to­tal of 56 hors­es sta­bled at the ARC. Of this to­tal, sev­en are on the Vet List and would there­fore have to sat­is­fy fit­ness con­sid­er­a­tions be­fore be­ing el­i­gi­ble to race. That leaves us with on­ly 49 hors­es avail­able for what­ev­er rac­ing pro­gramme is put on by the ARC.

​Of those 56 hors­es, sev­en were un­raced and 19 were maid­ens (pre­sum­ably the sev­en un­raced an­i­mals plus 12 oth­ers). For com­par­i­son, 77 hors­es were en­tered to race on the April 11 race day of the Bar­ba­dos Turf Club. Over in Guyana, 65 hors­es were en­tered for sev­en of the races sched­uled for their East­er race day (which was sub­se­quent­ly can­celled due to in­clement weath­er). Un­less our num­bers im­prove, we are go­ing nowhere be­cause the bet­ting turnover will not sus­tain the ARC.

​We sim­ply have to get our horse pop­u­la­tion up. While this is of­ten a “chick­en and egg” sit­u­a­tion–since new and ex­ist­ing own­ers will not in­vest in rac­ing stock un­less the Club’s fi­nances are sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved (prize mon­ey pay­ments con­tin­ue to be de­layed)–one pos­si­ble so­lu­tion is the sourc­ing of hors­es from cheap­er lo­ca­tions. In Guyana, an in­flux of hors­es from T&T and Brazil has com­ple­ment­ed their fledg­ling breed­ing in­dus­try; there is no rea­son why some­thing sim­i­lar can­not be ob­tained now. T&T is sur­round­ed by five po­ten­tial sources of rac­ing stock–Venezuela, Guyana, Pana­ma, Brazil, and Bar­ba­dos.

​Of these four, I be­lieve the on­ly one that can cur­rent­ly ex­port hors­es di­rect­ly to T&T is Bar­ba­dos (at least our hors­es are able to move di­rect­ly there and back). For the oth­er three, I think it is an out­right “no” for Guyana, while hors­es from Venezuela and Brazil will need to tran­sit or quar­an­tine in the USA, if they are to be al­lowed in­to this coun­try. Why such bu­reau­cra­cy? His­tor­i­cal­ly, there has been a fear of dis­eases be­ing brought in­to the coun­try, which can af­fect our gen­er­al horse pop­u­la­tion and per­haps the broad­er live­stock in­dus­try.

​Giv­en our low horse pop­u­la­tion, the risks to the for­mer must be fair­ly low, and while I can­not com­ment on the risk to the lat­ter, it seems re­mote and aca­d­e­m­ic. It is time for those in au­thor­i­ty to re­vise the laws and al­low hors­es from cur­rent­ly pro­hib­it­ed coun­tries to en­ter. Rac­ing stock from these na­tions is cer­tain to be cheap­er than tra­di­tion­al sources like the US (and, a long time ago, the UK).

​But who are those in au­thor­i­ty? Up to press time, the boards of both the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty and the Bet­ting Levy Board have not been ap­point­ed by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment. With the one-year an­niver­sary of this UNC gov­ern­ment ap­proach­ing, it will soon be a full year with­out prop­er gov­er­nance for this sec­tor.

Many will say this is symp­to­matic of how the sec­tor has been viewed by past gov­ern­ments. Giv­en the promi­nent role played in horse rac­ing by lead­ing mem­bers such as Ka­ma Ma­haraj and David Lee, there was an ob­vi­ous ex­pec­ta­tion of im­prove­ment. It is an up­hill bat­tle, but ad­dress­ing the com­po­si­tion of these boards will at least give the over 1,000 per­sons in­volved (in­clud­ing al­most 450 cur­rent­ly out of work) a chance to sur­vive and for their fam­i­ly lives to mat­ter.

​Ei­ther the Min­istry of Health or the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture is re­spon­si­ble for any de­ci­sion re al­low­ing hors­es from non-tra­di­tion­al sources to en­ter this coun­try, but change will not hap­pen with­out lob­by­ing pres­sure. The sport needs ad­min­is­tra­tors re­spon­si­ble for form­ing such a lob­by group; it will not hap­pen nat­u­ral­ly.

​From a fi­nan­cial per­spec­tive, in the ab­sence of se­ri­ous in­ter­ven­tion and no fund­ing (giv­en the state of the econ­o­my), it is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly ap­par­ent that the sport can­not sur­vive sole­ly by dis­pos­ing of its non-es­sen­tial as­sets.

​The ARC con­tin­ues to sell off any as­set that isn’t tied down. While this is a short-term, prag­mat­ic ap­proach to sourc­ing funds in the ab­sence of bor­row­ing ca­pac­i­ty, us­ing those funds to sat­is­fy re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture means there is no in­vest­ment in the fu­ture and no in­vest­ment in av­enues to gen­er­ate fu­ture rev­enue. The day is fast ap­proach­ing when there will be no more as­sets to sell and no source of earn­ings—a day that all lovers of the sport in this coun­try fear.

​It is time to bite the bul­let and form these boards with peo­ple who have horse rac­ing at heart, sup­port­ed by ex­per­tise from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and oth­er knowl­edge­able in­di­vid­u­als with the en­er­gy and con­nec­tions to act. En­sur­ing the “cheap­est” op­tion for bring­ing in hors­es to in­crease stock could be the match that once again ig­nites the horse rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty.

​In con­clu­sion: the time is now. Look­ing at the crowd that came to Ari­ma on East­er Mon­day, there is still im­mense in­ter­est and val­ue in horse rac­ing in T&T. Let us work to­geth­er to achieve suc­cess.