On Au­gust 23, the Ris­ing Sun Turf Club staged its 18th Guyana Cup race day, fea­tur­ing 14 races, 100 hors­es, and over TT$2 mil­lion in prize mon­ey.

​Many of this coun­try’s lead­ing rid­ers made the trip across to Guyana to com­pete along­side jock­eys from Guyana, Venezuela and Brazil. The horse pop­u­la­tion com­prised im­ports from Trinidad and To­ba­go, Venezuela, Brazil, and the USA, along­side hors­es bred in Guyana.

​In the 1950s and 1960s, Guyana had a rich horse-rac­ing tra­di­tion. Fol­low­ing the po­lit­i­cal up­heavals of that era, the in­dus­try was thrown in­to tur­moil. The George­town Turf Club was vir­tu­al­ly shut down and its once-fa­mous race­track par­tial­ly con­vert­ed in­to a stretch of road, which to­day still harkens back to its his­to­ry as Home­stretch Av­enue.

​Fol­low­ing that pe­ri­od, horse rac­ing in the coun­try di­min­ished to near non-ex­is­tence. Twen­ty years ago, the sport in Guyana was al­most ex­tinct. Jock­eys rode with­out prop­er equip­ment; hors­es raced any num­ber of times on any giv­en race day; there were no pro­to­cols to en­sure fair com­pe­ti­tion; and the gen­er­al qual­i­ty of the rac­ing sur­face was haz­ardous to any­one who knew bet­ter.

​A lot has changed over the last 20 years, but more specif­i­cal­ly over the last 10 years. The for­tunes of Guyana’s rac­ing in­dus­try have tak­en a sharp up­ward turn. A sign of the times is ev­i­denced by the sheer num­ber of T&T-bred and for­mer­ly T&T-owned or raced hors­es that took part in Sun­day’s pro­gramme. At a high lev­el, it was on­ly slight­ly low­er than the num­ber of hors­es en­tered to com­pete on In­de­pen­dence Mon­day’s lo­cal rac­ing card. How the mighty have fall­en!

​It would be too sim­plis­tic to at­tribute the de­cline of our lo­cal rac­ing in­dus­try sole­ly to this coun­try’s eco­nom­ic down­turn. It is hard to be­lieve that an eco­nom­ic up­turn alone would bring a resur­gence. The seeds of the de­cline we are wit­ness­ing to­day were sown with the de­ci­sion to cen­tralise races in Ari­ma.

​Every de­ci­sion tak­en since that date has sim­ply added more nails to the cof­fin of the lo­cal in­dus­try. By con­trast, Guyana has at least three race­tracks, and hors­es move from track to track to com­pete. My un­der­stand­ing is that the turnout on Sun­day was im­pres­sive and the races were broad­cast live on YouTube—a sim­ple feat that of­ten seems be­yond our lo­cal pro­mot­ers.

​We can learn many lessons from our Guyanese neigh­bours. To kick start their rac­ing in­dus­try, Guyana’s au­thor­i­ties were not afraid to al­low hors­es from oth­er parts of the world to come in­to the coun­try to com­pete. Mean­while, we re­main stuck in the mind­set that we can­not ad­mit hors­es from any­where oth­er than the UK and US with­out im­pos­ing quar­an­tine re­quire­ments that make the ven­ture un­eco­nom­ic.

​Is there re­al­ly any­thing left to pro­tect? We should im­me­di­ate­ly lift all re­stric­tions on hors­es com­ing from any­where in the world—es­pe­cial­ly Venezuela and Brazil. T&T could be an at­trac­tive mar­ket for the for­mer, giv­en our prox­im­i­ty.

​We al­so need to over­haul the sport’s gov­er­nance. It is time to elim­i­nate vest­ed in­ter­ests and put ad­min­is­tra­tion in­to the hands of pro­fes­sion­als with a sin­gle man­date: grow the sport. We need to in­di­cate to the gov­ern­ment that we do not want any ad­di­tion­al fund­ing out­side of what­ev­er the Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB) cur­rent­ly does but we do want their agree­ment to sup­port our own ini­tia­tives to grow.

​For ex­am­ple, it should not be lost on any­one that Guyana’s suc­cess­ful race card was host­ed on a Sun­day! Rac­ing on a Sun­day is treat­ed as sac­ri­le­gious in this coun­try... come on! Even if we con­sid­er our­selves a Chris­t­ian na­tion, are we more Chris­t­ian than the US, Italy, or Spain? No gov­ern­ment mon­ey is re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate this change; we just need a reg­u­la­tion waived or a law passed. The up­com­ing bud­get presents the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so.

​News sur­faced on Sat­ur­day that the new BLB, un­der the chair­man­ship of Derek De Caires, is cur­rent­ly fi­nal­is­ing a three-year pro­pos­al to present to the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Ka­ma Ma­haraj. This plan in­cludes in­creased fund­ing once the Gam­ing Act is pro­claimed. Re­gard­ing the ail­ing Ari­ma Race Club, an­oth­er team is en­gi­neer­ing a sep­a­rate plan; let us hope this strat­e­gy is more re­al­is­tic, rather than mere­ly “holis­tic” like past at­tempts and there­fore doomed for fail­ure.

​Rac­ing needs to take back con­trol of its fu­ture. We must look around at our neigh­bours who are man­ag­ing things bet­ter and learn from them. The sil­ver lin­ing of the Guyanese ex­pe­ri­ence is that it shows that there is al­ways hope. Twen­ty years ago, their rac­ing scene was near ex­tinc­tion. Now, it may be the gem of the Caribbean!

​We can re­bound in T&T, but key stake­hold­ers must work to­geth­er: the Ari­ma Race Club, the BLB, and the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty. They can start by putting away their con­stant back-stab­bing and pet­ty jeal­ousies. Too many fig­ures, past and present, car­ry big egos ac­quired through fam­i­ly in­her­i­tance more than ac­tu­al skill—which breeds en­vy. All of this must stop. First and fore­most, horse rac­ing needs own­ers. Lots of them. But own­ers re­quire in­cen­tives, and trust in pay­ments.

It will be a long road back, and some may be too old to han­dle the pres­sure, so then move aside, but just don’t “dri­ve” by with loud whis­pers of dis­sent.