An­dre Bap­tise

The in­tro­duc­tion of the Hi 5 races to T&T was in­tend­ed to give pun­ters more op­por­tu­ni­ties for gam­bling suc­cess, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the like­li­hood of high­er pay­outs. While this has large­ly been achieved, when one ex­am­ines the out­come of most of the Hi 5 races, this has come with a very un­seem­ly un­der­tone–in­creased pos­si­bil­i­ties of the rig­ging of races in Trinidad with fifth place fin­ish­ers (where no prize mon­ey is nor­mal­ly payable to con­nec­tions) be­ing a great can­di­date for "se­lec­tion" from any pros­per­ous mind­ed gam­bler with con­nec­tions to jock­eys/ap­pren­tices. Let us have a look at some of the re­sults of the Hi 5 races over the last five race days.

De­cem­ber 11 –Race 5

1. Sig­nal Alert

2. Sa­cred Trust

3. Read­be­tweend­lines

4. First to Fly

5. Un­du­la­tion

Paid? - $1,494.50

Pun­ters backed three hors­es against the en­tire field with the re­main­der 20/1 and up. How­ev­er, Un­du­la­tion at 99/1 was fifth.

Race 8

1. Eto

2. Gar­de­nan­gel

3. Ksar Ghi­lane

4. The Gen­er­al

5. Dam­age Con­trol

Paid - $20,215.50

In­di­an King the red-hot favourite broke awk­ward­ly from the stalls and this front run­ner raced near­er last than first for most of the race, be­fore fin­ish­ing in the mid­dle of the field. Not many pun­ters would have ex­pect­ed In­di­an King to fin­ish un­placed in this 1200 me­tres con­test.

No­vem­ber 27 Race 3

1. Un­bri­dleme

2. The Con­queror

3. Greazy

4. Best De­fense

5. My Giselle

Paid � $13,365.90

In­ter­est­ing­ly My Giselle an un­con­sid­ered 99/1 shot filled fifth po­si­tion ahead of oth­er fan­cied hors­es.

Race 7

1.Cov­er You Don­key

2.Team Con­nec­tion

3.Ho­n­ourable Men­tion

4.Eyes of the Wolf

5.Un­bri­dled Way

Paid - $7,720.90

This was a mud­dling sort of race, where the plac­ings in this re­sult were not on­ly com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed, but al­so rather puz­zling.

No­vem­ber 20 Race 5

1. Bul­let Banker

2. Burn­ing Wells

3. An­gel­i­ca Jane

4. Storm On

5. Hur­ri­cane Lee

Paid - $14,360.40

An­oth­er event in which a horse with no form, oth­er than a long price hit the board. Storm On was an un­con­sid­ered out­sider but man­aged to fill one of the five po­si­tions.

The races re­ferred to above,share one com­mon fea­ture. The fourth and/or fifth place fin­ish­ers in the race were com­plete­ly un­con­sid­ered. In one of the above races, the favourite ran in­ex­plic­a­bly bad. It is in­ter­est­ing to note that in the ear­ly days of the in­tro­duc­tion of the Hi5, the re­sults were of­ten stump­ing pun­ters re­sult­ing in the bet­ting be­ing car­ried for­ward to fu­ture Hi5 races, some­times on oth­er days. Such an event is be­com­ing more and more rare. Is this co­in­ci­dence, or have a group of in­di­vid­u­als found a way to by­pass the le­git­i­mate state of bet­ting in this coun­try and con­trived with the help of oth­ers to beat the sys­tem (and it would not be the first time) while at the same time mak­ing mon­ey for them­selves. The sport in T&T has been faced with lots of al­le­ga­tions about race fix­ing. There is a lot of risk in do­ing this with a win­ner be­cause most eyes are trained on that horse and al­so on the hors­es that are "in the frame".

Much less eyes are fo­cused on the hors­es out­side of the top three and so, in a man­ner of speak­ing, any num­ber could call un­less you read the signs and iden­ti­fy sim­i­lar­i­ties with jock­eys, train­ers, grooms and even own­ers. No one group should be ex­empt­ed from bal­ances and checks. If the au­thor­i­ties in Trinidad are re­al­ly se­ri­ous, they should con­sid­er set­ting up a Bet­ting In­ves­ti­ga­to­ry body to ex­am­ine re­sults and bet­ting pat­terns in the Hi5 races, there are many lead­ing au­dit­ing firms in the coun­try well equipped to han­dle this role ob­jec­tive­ly. The sport needs to re­gain cred­i­bil­i­ty. And while the in­tro­duc­tion of the new rat­ing sys­tem is an ap­proach to do­ing so, it can­not stop there. The Hi 5 races present a "be­low the radar" av­enue for those with mal-in­tent to fur­ther un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty of the sport and the new ad­min­is­tra­tion must do some­thing about it. If it is fifth place is be­ing used as the banker with per­sons be­ing paid to en­sure their out­sider does not fin­ish fifth, then this has to be ver­i­fied by those en­trust­ed with that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty.

One such way would be to place cam­eras and even mi­cro­phones in the jock­ey room, as is done in sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al coun­tries, so that the stew­ards of the day can ob­serve every­thing in the jock­ey room. Per­haps to, some vig­i­lance is need­ed from the stew­ards to en­sure every mat­ter is prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed. There are re­ports cir­cu­lat­ing in the rac­ing in­dus­try that the cur­rent bunch of stew­ards has not all be well trained in their field and that on­ly one or two stew­ards have at­tend­ed a num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al train­ing sem­i­nars and these stew­ards have not passed on their knowl­edge to oth­ers when they re­turn from ex­pen­sive over­seas trips. Per­haps a more fo­cus stew­ard­ing func­tion will alert every­one of the cur­rent dark shield be­ing placed on the le­git­i­ma­cy of the Hi5 Bet­ting. Al­so, the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) need to tell the pub­lic why it is that on sev­er­al days of horserac­ing, the cam­eras on the back straight at San­ta Rosa Park and else­where are not work­ing. This neg­li­gence by the ARC, presents a glar­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty for un­der­hand tac­tics and tricks to be adopt­ed dur­ing the course of a race.

And the sim­ple fact is that every­one knows about it, and some it ap­pears will do their best to ex­ploit it. The sug­ges­tion by some that the ARC in­ten­tion­al­ly al­low the cam­eras to re­main in need of re­pair for per­son­al rea­sons has to be pure­ly a fal­la­cy. It is in­con­ceiv­able that the ARC will al­low their bet­ting to be com­pro­mised. Trust in horserac­ing, I have been told is a pipedream and will nev­er be re­al­i­ty. Un­for­tu­nate­ly for those who spread this er­rant doc­trine, I do not be­lieve that is or should be the case in any sport, much less horserac­ing, where gam­bling and loads of mon­ey is in­volved. This is like say­ing to me that per­sons will cov­er up a horserac­ing ar­ti­cle be­cause of their close as­so­ci­a­tion with some­one be­cause of his re­la­tion­ship with their grand­fa­ther.

All of this con­fu­sion is fur­ther rea­son for one to doubt the sin­cer­i­ty of some in horserac­ing. New chair­man of the Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty, Derek Chin, has an abun­dance of en­er­gy and spir­it and while his heart is in the right place, he will need peo­ple around him who he can trust, and just a cur­so­ry glance at many of the po­si­tions in horserac­ing cur­rent­ly would sug­gest that is not eas­i­ly forth­com­ing. The road ahead for horserac­ing looks filled with pit­falls and at times can be a mine­field. Ul­ti­mate­ly though, it is time for horserac­ing to en­sure that no one is above the law and the per­sis­tent ef­forts in­volv­ing a ma­nip­u­la­tion of the Hi5 must be treat­ed with ur­gency if the pub­lic faith in horserac­ing is to be re­stored. An ex­am­ple of any wrong­do­ers must be re­vealed if dis­cov­ered. Fam­i­ly mem­ber or not, horserac­ing needs a life­line called trans­paren­cy.