The 2024 Car­ni­val sea­son is a short one this year but the rac­ing sea­son hasn’t re­al­ly ben­e­fit­ed since there aren’t much hors­es to race in any event.

The open­ing day of the 2024 rac­ing sea­son, as oc­curred in 2023, oc­curred in late Jan­u­ary and all signs are this sea­son will be just as chal­leng­ing for con­nec­tions of race­hors­es as last year was.

On the pos­i­tive side, race­go­ers were treat­ed to a re­fur­bished San­ta Rosa Park (Ari­ma) though the pro­posed im­po­si­tion of a small en­trance and park­ing fee is sure to dis­en­fran­chise a few race­go­ers. It is a prob­a­bly rea­son­able move but the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) man­age­ment will have to keep their ears to the ground to get a good feel as to how race­go­ers re­act to this change. Im­proved fa­cil­i­ties aside, most race­go­ers will more ap­pre­ci­ate more com­pet­i­tive races which is on­ly pos­si­ble if the Club can find a way to get more hors­es to their fa­cil­i­ty.

In the mean­time, there are a lot of small things to be cor­rect­ed with some de­gree of ur­gency. Over the week­end, there were some prob­lems with the am­bu­lance ser­vice which re­sult­ed in the am­bu­lance be­ing un­avail­able on cer­tain gal­lop days. This needs to be ad­dressed and re­solved am­i­ca­bly be­cause rac­ing is not pos­si­ble with­out an am­bu­lance ser­vice present.

Giv­en the lengthy pe­ri­od be­tween race days, the ob­jec­tive should be to try to get as many of the hors­es to com­pete on each day which would de­pend on the abil­i­ty of the hand­i­cap­pers and the race framers to make con­di­tions com­pet­i­tive for all con­nec­tions. Both groups will con­tin­ue to be test­ed each race day and thus far, they have not ex­celled.

An­oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty that should be ex­plored giv­en the pauci­ty of race days is to try to make each race day more of a fam­i­ly oc­ca­sion. This would re­quire the ARC to pur­sue part­ner­ships with en­ti­ties in­volved in pro­vid­ing fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment. One can think of us­ing the in­field or oth­er ar­eas to host fairs and the like which will bring fam­i­lies to the track and hope­ful­ly, some bet­ting could take place as an aside.

It al­so ap­pears as though the ARC was able to re­solve some of its is­sues with the providers of the over­seas races since it was note­wor­thy that the track was able to ac­cept bet­ting on the US rac­ing from tracks like Gulf­stream Park and San­ta Ani­ta Park, two of the pre­mier tracks in the US. At the same time, they con­tin­ue to main­tain their re­la­tion­ship with Cay­manas Race Track though it is un­known how much in­ter­est those races gen­er­ate giv­en the like­ly dif­fi­cul­ty in un­der­stand­ing the form of the Ja­maican hors­es.

With re­spect to the hors­es them­selves, there were some promis­ing per­for­mances from the ju­ve­niles on the open­ing race day with the likes of El Rey San­jay, Bay­ou Jazz and Se­cret Pages all show­ing promise for the fu­ture. With the cham­pi­on Head­lines Again re­cov­er­ing from an in­jury and like­ly to be off the track for a few months, a few ri­vals to this ex­cep­tion­al fil­ly should de­vel­op in the com­ing months. The ARC needs to ex­plore all av­enues to as­sist the sopho­more class in de­vel­op­ing fur­ther so that the three-year-old and over races can be more com­pet­i­tive and throw up enough hors­es to make the clas­sic races more com­pet­i­tive.

On the in­ter­na­tion­al front, it was dis­ap­point­ing to learn that T&T’s con­tenders for the ma­jor races com­ing up at the Gar­ri­son Sa­van­nah may not be tak­ing their chances af­ter all. The tri­al for the Sandy Lane Gold Cup took place on Feb­ru­ary 3 with a six-year-old US im­port, Pat’s Sewing Ma­chine scor­ing a blood­less vic­to­ry over the usu­al Bar­ba­di­an sus­pects, which in­clude the nine-year-old Re­nais­sance Frol­ic. Whether the T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tives would have been com­pet­i­tive in the event, no one knows but it is un­for­tu­nate that trans­porta­tion is­sues would have de­nied them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show their abil­i­ty to every­one.

Re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tion is an­oth­er av­enue for the sport to im­prove through­out the re­gion and with Guyana in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in new stock, it is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore that coun­try’s home-bred hors­es be­gin to flaunt their prowess at the re­gion­al lev­el. Hope­ful­ly, the fu­ture of the sport of this coun­try is brighter than it ap­pears at the mo­ment.