Bring back electronic timer ARC

LOCAL horse racing is on the rebound after struggling to stay alive for a number of years. This must be credited to the hard work of ex-Arima Race Club president now 1st vice-president John O’Brien, management committee members Emmanuel “Manny” Lawrence and Richard Smith, racing secretary Robin Jaisingh and owner-breeder-trainer Maniram “Boboy” Maharaj in particular, with great in-put from Betting Levy Board chairman Roop Chan Chadeesingh and his team.Through the great love for the sport, O’Brien and Lawrence worked tirelessly to bring sponsors back into the racing fold and have succeeded in great measure.

But none can deny there is still a long way to go, however, before local horse racing returns to the “ole time days,” when there were more than 200 entries for the Boxing Day programme at the “Big Yard,” the Queen’s Park Savannah. As the saying goes, “little things mean a lot,” and it must be suggested to the ARC, they must move swiftly to get back the electronic timing system for events. Now let us go to the official racing programme. There are a number of improvements which could easily be made, including the jockeys body weight and listed track records printed in a bigger, more readable type, and at the front of the programme. There was an innovation on Carib Brewery Day which needs to be continued and encouraged, that the assessment and synopsis of the form of each horse clearly printed at the bottom of the horses’ name. This could only redound to the benefit of turfites and by extension the betting pool. Why was this a one and done job?

And now to a more controversial point. Why, when weights on racing programmes in England, whose Rules of Racing we have adopted, and the United States, whose betting system we have copied, they use pounds (example My Dear Boy 126 D Holland) and we metric? At least like Barbados, let us use the metric weights with pounds in brackets so all turfites can understand. Perhaps it may sound retrograde, but using the old pound system would give the lesser knowledgeable turfites a better feel for racing, giving him/her a better shot at assessing the horses’ form in relation to the weights. This also goes for the distance of races, which are listed on English programmes as 10 furlongs and not 2000 metres as we do. How much is 2000 metres to the uninitiated, who may not have had secondary schooling, the poor man who wants to put in a bet? Perhaps here we can well say “Racing the Sport of Kings.” For the rich and knowledgeable only.

Also how well are we doing with the scrambled television coverage?  It is beyond comprehension that the ordinary turfite who cannot get to the track at Santa Rosa Park, is being asked to fork out $862.50 to see racing live on televison. ARC miust be wary of the competition who offers US and English racing live in air-conditioned comfort at the betting shops all free of charge. Back to controversy. Why have we strayed from the classification of horses and instead adopted the American way of Optional Claiming? It is said, when something is not broken do not fix it. To this day, Barbados continue to use this system successfully. Horse racing is more understandable to the “small man” when there are A Class, B Class etc, so why not bring back the “ole time days” in this regard.
Try it, you may like it ARC.