An­dre E Bap­tiste

Sport­ing his­to­ry in this coun­try is as rare as gold and more price­less than di­a­mond. I say this be­cause as I trav­elled through var­i­ous parts of T&T over the last six week­ends, thanks to in­vi­ta­tions from sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, I am con­stant­ly be­ing told about the plea­sure many are hav­ing in read­ing about some of our his­to­ry in horserac­ing.

My broth­er (Nigel Mark) con­stant­ly re­minds me that I am trav­el­ling so much that I am un­able to be at the race­track to watch some of our hors­es race (a fact, I will have to ad­dress soon). It is re­mark­able that many of the per­sons with whom I have spo­ken are from all walks of our so­ci­ety and from var­i­ous age groups as well. An­oth­er in­ter­est­ing per­spec­tive has to be the amount of women that are in­ter­est­ed in these horserac­ing tales.

There is some­thing about a pow­er­ful­ly built an­i­mal rac­ing at un­be­liev­able speed that at­tracts gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion. For those who want more, rest as­sured there will be more. I would hope though that soon­er rather than lat­er, the Ari­ma Race Club would recog­nise the im­por­tance of this fea­ture of horserac­ing his­to­ry and utilise many of those still alive at the mo­ment to en­sure mem­o­ries live on.

But for now, to­day in Part four of our se­ries on top hors­es through the years, we fo­cus on the West In­di­an-bred colts that graced the turf pre-cen­tral­i­sa­tion. This re­view must start with the year 1982. This was the year of Roy­al Colours, but in truth, that year we had three ex­cep­tion­al colts-Roy­al Colours, Casano­va and Mer­curius.

These three colts dom­i­nat­ed the cre­ole scene lo­cal­ly, fought out the fin­ish of the Der­by and two of the three went on to per­form cred­itably in the Cla­si­co del Caribe. Roy­al Colours was un­doubt­ed­ly the king of the crop and af­ter wins in the

East­er Guineas and Mid­sum­mer Clas­sic, he was a sol­id favourite to win the Der­by and the Triple Crown. Mer­curius had been the top two-year-old colt via an un­beat­en sea­son and a win in the St James Stakes and he had run con­sis­tent­ly well in all of the clas­sic and non-clas­sic races.

Casano­va had been a late de­vel­op­ing colt who blos­somed in his three-year-old sea­son. The Der­by brought them to­geth­er at the peak of their pow­ers. With three fur­longs to run, Carl­ton Ram­sa­roop took Casano­va to the front, but he was be­ing stalked by the Venice Richards-rid­den Roy­al Colours and Mer­curius. Richards brought Roy­al Colours to chal­lenge Casano­va at the top of the Sa­van­nah straight and both colts bat­tled game­ly down the straight be­fore Roy­al Colours seized the ad­van­tage and edged clear for a ¾ length vic­to­ry.

It was re­al­ly good stuff. Roy­al Colours would go on to mark his name in the record books with vic­to­ry over the A-class an­i­mals in en­su­ing years and re­mains wide­ly con­sid­ered as one of the best cre­oles to ever grace the lo­cal stage.

Al­so falling in­to that cat­e­go­ry was Harold Thavenot's Be­head­ed. The 1979 equine in­fluen­za re­sult­ed in nu­mer­ous hors­es not mak­ing their de­but un­til their three-year-old sea­son. This colt fell in­to that cat­e­go­ry. Af­ter two com­fort­able vic­to­ries in his open­ing races, he was a strong favourite for the first clas­sic, the East­er Guineas.

Al­though he ran well and fin­ished sec­ond to the fil­ly Isis, there was a strong air of dis­ap­point­ment in the Hadeed camp since they clear­ly thought he was much bet­ter than that. Off the track for a few months there­after, he re­turned at San­ta Rosa Park to score the widest mar­gin vic­to­ry ever seen on the lo­cal track ahead of an over-matched bunch of lo­cal­ly bred hors­es.

From there he pro­ceed­ed to romp in the fi­nal two legs of the Triple Crown. His style of rac­ing-go­ing straight to the front and run­ning his ri­vals in­to the ground will not be for­got­ten by those who wit­nessed it. He dis­ap­point­ed in the Clas­si­co, prob­a­bly due to the al­ti­tude, but that did not di­min­ish the lega­cy or im­pres­sion cre­at­ed by his three-year-old cam­paign. He failed to train on there­after but as a three-year-old, he was one of the best ever seen.

For those who can­not re­mem­ber or re­call any of this, it would prob­a­bly be a good idea to con­tact any­one of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions who should have kept videos of some of these fa­mous hors­es and al­so races. I am cer­tain that there are many own­ers that can pro­vide suf­fi­cient high­lights of these events, that would make for both in­ter­est­ing view­ing and opin­ions.