Ways to improve horse racing

Now that local horse racing steadies itself for a revival, all of those who love the sport must be hoping that it will progress to higher heights. To assist in this process, I am outlining below some of the thoughts of a number of the average turfites who I have been speaking to over the last few months. First a disclaimer. Let me state that although the views expressed are those of the many, I will not be revealing any names since the views were expressed in casual conversation and were not meant to be intep-reted as political affiliation of any sort.

The suggestions put forward can be classified into four main categories:
 (I)  Securing deeper market penetration
(II)  Improving the competitive nature of each day’s racing
(III)  Increasing the public confidence in the local racing industry
(IV)  Encouraging new entrants into racehorse ownership
Securing deeper market penetration
Many people believe that the secret to longevity of horse racing in Trinidad and Tobago is not the development of strategies to encourage people to attend races. Rather it is an in-your-face strategy which takes horse racing to the people. Is it any surprise that in the US and the UK, the most popular sports are those which are broadcast live to the general public?  This strategy takes the sport to the people and kindles the fire which will burn in the hearts and minds of the fan.

Some of the suggestions in this regard include the following:
 * Live and exciting  television and radio broadcast of local horse racing
* Live radio and television broadcast of overseas horse racing events (major races).
At the moment, one radio station and a television station use a presenter whose words are so monological in tone, some people would believe it is a funeral rather than a horse race. Those with the relevant statistic, will no doubt testify to the decline in participation in local horse racing when the television broadcast of the races were halted. Contrary to the expected increase in attendance at local racing, there was a significant decline. The reason — fewer people are aware of the races and so the interest in subsequent days is not there.  A similar, possibly more potent, argument can be made for radio broadcasts.  While sponsorship might be a problem, in the spirit of co-operation, the betting shops and other interested corporate sponsors should be encouraged to subsidise the costs.

The stations can also subsidise some of the cost, since this is a means of securing a greater viewing/listening audience.  Why overseas racing, some might ask?  The objective is to build interest in horse racing and the broadcast of good quality overseas races will be an invaluable tool in building this interest. Once the fire has been kindled, sustaining it will be one of the big challenges for the local horse racing management committee. Improving the competitive nature of local horse racing to improve competitiveness, the answer is not to revert to the old classification system, nor is it to remain with the current claiming/allowance race system.  The best system in the view of the group of turfites is along the lines of the UK system of handicap ratings combined with claiming and selling races.

A group of experienced handicappers should be formed and this group made responsible for handicapping every horse in training in Trinidad and Tobago.  Retention of claiming races will allow owners/trainers to handicap their own horses while selling races will provide those with lower quality animals an opportunity to pick a pepper, so to speak.  A second aspect of improving competitiveness is the quality of our raceday jocks. The majority of them are average at best, and since the closure of the jockey school, race riding skills have gone steadily downhill. Prior to the introduction of the jockey school, apprentices had to be attached to the bigger stables and met certain mimimum criteria in terms of experience. if these criteria are still in place, it is not evident from what is actually transpiring. Re-introduction and enforcement of these criteria are essential.  We also need to re-introduce the mandatory random drug testing of jockeys.  Each jockey should be drug tested at least once a year. A third aspect of improving the competitive nature is the introduction of speed figures for horse performances in their previous starts. 

We have had five years of racing on the all-weather surface, sufficient time for the development of standard times for each distance. These should be used along with the traditional factors of weight/going allowance and distance from winner to derive a speed figure for each horse in a race.  Making this information available to the punter will significantly improve the punter’s information base on local horse racing and put it closer to its overseas rivals.
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(Continues tomorrow).