The first leg of the lo­cal Triple Crown will take place on May 30 with the run­ning of the Guineas (East­er Guineas to those who re­mem­ber the hey­days of the sport). The race is nei­ther run at East­er nor as sig­nif­i­cant on the lo­cal rac­ing cal­en­dar as it once was.

Eight hors­es are nom­i­nat­ed for this year’s edi­tion, but, as in the pri­or years, the race ap­pears to be all about one horse, the Di­ane Scott-owned Head­lin­er, an­oth­er out­stand­ing off­spring of the great Head­line News. This colt has been un­beat­en in his four starts to date and should eas­i­ly make it five next Fri­day. It is prob­a­bly not worth talk­ing about the oth­ers as win con­tenders. More in­ter­est­ing will be the bat­tle for the mi­nor places, with Show­time and Supreme Leader stand­ing out among the oth­er sev­en. They are al­so the on­ly oth­er win­ners in the event and should form the tri­fec­ta.

Guineas notwith­stand­ing, it is hard to get ex­cit­ed about the on­ly race day in May and dif­fi­cult to en­vis­age the long-term fu­ture of the sport in this coun­try. One can on­ly hope that with a new ad­min­is­tra­tion in place, in­clud­ing among them a cou­ple of in­di­vid­u­als with a pas­sion and eye for the sport, that the much-need­ed gov­ern­ment sup­port can be re­alised.

One cer­tain­ly got the im­pres­sion, right­ful­ly or wrong­ly, that the PNM gov­ern­ment was op­posed to the de­vel­op­ment of the sport and re­fused to put any sup­port (not nec­es­sar­i­ly fi­nan­cial) in­to its sur­vival. The UNC gov­ern­ment made it clear that when it won, every­one would win and those many in­volved in horse rac­ing must be hop­ing that promise al­so ex­tends to a sport which has sup­port­ed hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of fam­i­lies over the years.

While short-term fi­nan­cial sup­port would be wel­come, more im­por­tant is the sup­port re­quired on a leg­isla­tive and bu­reau­crat­ic lev­el in ar­eas such as:

(i) per­mits to im­port hors­es from coun­tries pre­vi­ous­ly off-lim­its (such as Venezuela) which can al­low cheap­er quan­ti­ty of hors­es in­to the coun­try;

(ii) a li­cense to run a mem­ber’s club at the track which can en­hance rev­enue earn­ings;

(iii) leg­is­la­tion to al­low rac­ing on Sun­days which would have an im­me­di­ate im­pact on pro­mo­tion of horse rac­ing;

(iv) a mora­to­ri­um on pay­ing of bet­ting levies and oth­er tax­es by the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) for at least five years; and

(v) strength­en­ing of the pow­ers of the Bet­ting Levy Board and the fines and oth­er ac­tions that can be im­posed, so it can al­so tack­le the il­le­gal gam­ing tak­ing place in this coun­try, added to a bet­ter com­po­si­tion of the board in both num­bers and qual­i­ty.

While the mora­to­ri­um will have a fi­nan­cial im­pact, this is nom­i­nal in the scheme of things, and long-term can be re­versed once the for­tunes of the well-man­aged horse rac­ing in­dus­try are re­sumed.

While the diehard pun­ters wait for lo­cal rac­ing to win, there has been a lot of ac­tiv­i­ty on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene, with most coun­tries al­ready hav­ing seen at least one of their three-year-old clas­sics run off. On Sat­ur­day, the sec­ond leg of the US Triple Crown was run off at Pim­li­co for the fi­nal time for two or three years as the track is be­ing closed for mas­sive ren­o­va­tions.

At one time, it was thought that the track would be closed per­ma­nent­ly but the fact that a way was found for it to sur­vive must pro­vide some hope for us here in T&T.

The barg­ing in­ci­dent at the top of the stretch would no doubt have re­sult­ed in at least one of those jock­eys in­volved be­ing stood down for sev­er­al days (some­thing we will hear about in the days to come) but did not re­sult in an al­ter­ation to the re­sult since the best horse, Jour­nal­ism, still man­aged to win and achieve some re­demp­tion for his nar­row de­feat in the Ken­tucky Der­by.

The Irish 2000 Guineas will take place on Sat­ur­day (May 24) and the un­lucky run­ner-up in the Eng­lish 2000 Guineas, Field of Gold, will be look­ing for his own re­demp­tion with a dif­fer­ent jock­ey on­board. Jock­ey er­ror cost him vic­to­ry that day and those of us who are fans of the Khalid Ab­dul­lah colours (Danc­ing Brave colours ), will be hop­ing he is able to se­cure the same, against a field that looks de­cid­ed­ly weak­er.

The Eng­lish Der­by will take place on June 7, and three sons of Frankel - Damy­sus, Night­walk­er and Op­por­tu­ni­ty – top my list of fan­cies since I be­lieve the favourites are all vul­ner­a­ble. The Oaks on June 6 could al­so be a Frankel fest with two of his daugh­ters – Min­nie Hauk and Giselle – my top two to top­ple the favourite, 1000 Guineas vic­tress, Desert Flower.

As we look ahead to the fu­ture, it is hoped that as T&T rac­ing re­cov­ers, so too will the in­ter-coun­try ri­val­ry be­tween T&T, Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos and even Guyana, which now has a bur­geon­ing rac­ing sec­tor. This in­ter-coun­try com­pe­ti­tion will on­ly boost the sport in the re­gion and help all the gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue to de­liv­er on a promise to de­vel­op sports tourism in the re­gion.