Shas­tri Boodan

Goat rac­ing is back with two big events sched­uled for the East­er week­end in To­ba­go.

As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of Tourism Meghan Mor­ri­son told Guardian Me­dia that 60,000 vis­i­tors are ex­pect­ed in To­ba­go over the week­end.

Mor­ris­son said af­ter a two- year hia­tus goat rac­ing would re­turn on East­er Mon­day at the Mt Pleas­ant Recre­ation­al Fa­cil­i­ty and on Tues­day at the Buc­coo In­te­grat­ed Goat Rac­ing Com­plex.

Mor­ris­son said the econ­o­my is ex­pect­ed to get a boost over the long week­end af­ter go­ing through a two-year drought.

Kernil Job, one of the plan­ners for Mon­day’s event which is be­ing host­ed by the Can­nan/ Mt Pleas­ant /Bon ac­cord Com­mu­ni­ty En­hance­ment Group said his or­gan­i­sa­tion had a short time to plan the races and he was con­fi­dent that every­thing would run smooth­ly.

Job said the event be­gins at 8 am and as­sured there would be plen­ty park­ing and del­i­ca­cies on sale.

Job said the goats and their jock­eys are ready to run and are on­ly too ex­cit­ed to par­tic­i­pate.

Neil Potts, goat rac­er and train­er, said goat rac­ing was long over­due.

Potts said he is ready to take on the com­pe­ti­tion on Mon­day at Buc­coo.

Goat rac­ing start­ed off as a poor man’s sport and gained pop­u­lar­i­ty as an event. How­ev­er it has be­come syn­ony­mous with the cul­ture of To­ba­go and can be seen through­out the year.

Sim­i­lar to horse rac­ing, goats are di­vid­ed in­to sev­er­al clas­si­fi­ca­tions: C2 (first-time run­ners), C1 (run­ners from the pre­vi­ous year), B (run­ning for the past two years) and A (most ex­pe­ri­enced run­ners).

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