Few words can be used to de­scribe the ex­pe­ri­ence of bring­ing a his­toric city such as Paris in France to host the 2024 Olympics. 

Al­though on­ly five days of events have tak­en place so far, the pace of the ac­tiv­i­ty is fast and fu­ri­ous. In Paris, you are meet­ing jour­nal­ists and fans from every cor­ner of the world, in­clud­ing Rus­sia. As much as the lat­ter would like to be­lieve that its Friend­ship Games could di­vert the at­ten­tion of its cit­i­zens, there is lit­tle doubt that the French pub­lic is al­so us­ing every means pos­si­ble to view the Games since they are not be­ing broad­cast on any of the state me­dia, and it is un­der­stood that the pri­vate me­dia has al­so been ad­vised not to show the Games. 

This is a great pity for the Rus­sians, but strange­ly enough, the feed­back from T&T is that my fel­low cit­i­zens are al­so hav­ing to be very cre­ative to find ways of view­ing the games. This must be a great trav­es­ty.

My un­der­stand­ing is that the na­tion­al tele­vi­sion sta­tion, TTT, owns the broad­cast rights, which they ac­quired from and are us­ing the re­gion­al broad­cast­er, Sports­max, who ul­ti­mate­ly has all the rights and maybe all the say. While this, in and of it­self, would not be an is­sue, the lo­cal pub­lic has been call­ing me, writ­ing me, and send­ing videos, clips, and com­ments that are the best sen­ti­ments of sad­ness at treat­ment. Many of them, based on what they have ex­pe­ri­enced and ex­pressed, have been pulling their hair out over the choice of events be­ing broad­cast on the Sports­max feed. 

It is un­der­stood that users of the Sports­max app have a wide range of choic­es in terms of what type of event they would like to view, but this is not the case for what it ap­pears Sports­max is broad­cast­ing to the lo­cal pub­lic, or at least the choic­es for the lo­cal pub­lic.

View­ers have ap­par­ent­ly had to set­tle for the likes of archery, beach vol­ley­ball, ju­do, surf­ing, taek­won­do, etc. while the pre­mier events like artis­tic gym­nas­tics, swim­ming, and foot­ball are tak­ing place si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. What sense can that make? It isn’t clear, and I have no idea whether there are any pri­vate sec­tor spon­sors of the games, but those spon­sors should be ex­press­ing their great dis­plea­sure at what is tak­ing place.

While the sit­u­a­tion will prob­a­bly im­prove when the track and field events be­gin lat­er this week, pri­mar­i­ly be­cause of the Ja­maican pres­ence, this is a high­ly un­sat­is­fac­to­ry sit­u­a­tion. The lack of op­tions is com­pound­ed by the usu­al re­quire­ment of black­ing out the Olympics from every oth­er chan­nel that might pro­vide al­ter­na­tive cov­er­age. High­ly un­sat­is­fac­to­ry.

The col­lec­tive groan across all house­holds in my home coun­try could be heard all the way in Paris. As I watch the cov­er­age over here, it is mea­sured, and there are split screens link­ing broad­casts from one event to the next, which gives the con­sumer a lot of ben­e­fit. The pow­ers that be must and should do bet­ter.

I un­der­stand that every day there is a re­cap done from the stu­dios, and that on­ly com­pounds the mis­ery for lo­cal view­ers. TTT must do bet­ter or stop bid­ding to dis­play mar­quee events such as the Olympics.

I want to say that giv­en the hon­est and sports-ori­ent­ed team at TTT, se­cret­ly in their hearts and souls, these ap­par­ent events must be hurt­ing them deeply, or maybe just out of their con­trol.

Giv­en the poor cov­er­age of the Olympics, there could be room for fans to fo­cus on the lo­cal horse rac­ing fare that will take place on Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, Thurs­day (Au­gust 1). The sec­ond jew­el of the lo­cal Triple Crown, the Mid­sum­mer Clas­sic over 1,900 me­tres on the turf, will take place. Mak­ing her re­turn is the 2023 Cham­pi­on Ju­ve­nile, Head­lines Again. This race has a sense of déjà vu about it since in 2023 it was the re­turn­ing cham­pi­on ju­ve­nile, Hel­lo World, who was fac­ing his sta­ble com­pan­ion, In The Head­lines, and was un­able to get the bet­ter of that fil­ly but sub­se­quent­ly proved him­self a cham­pi­on. 

That could be the case again in 2024 since that fil­ly’s sta­ble com­pan­ion, Un­cle Rog, is the win­ner of the first leg of the Triple Crown, the Guineas, and even if he gets the bet­ter of the fil­ly on this oc­ca­sion, the fil­ly may still turn out to be the su­pe­ri­or race­horse. It is not a giv­en that he will get the bet­ter of her, though. Un­cle Rog is very ex­posed, and any­thing is pos­si­ble. The O’Brien sta­ble al­so fields Hel­lo World’s broth­er, For­ev­er Grand, in the Clas­sic, and while he has won his last two starts, like the oth­er con­tenders, he will have to im­prove con­sid­er­ably to be a threat. 

The same is true for the Guineas run­ner-ups, Red Alert and Se­cret Pages, both daugh­ters of Stew­ards Cup win­ner Sig­nal Alert. There are oth­er con­tenders in the race, and it is pos­si­ble that the shape of the race could be changed if the sur­face is switched from the turf to the main track, but it is hard to shake the view that it is es­sen­tial­ly a two-horse race be­tween Head­lines Again and Un­cle Rog, with pref­er­ence for the proven qual­i­ty of the for­mer.

There is al­so a ma­jor race meet­ing tak­ing place at Good­wood Race­course in the UK, with the fea­ture races be­ing the Sus­sex Stakes, in which St James Palace Stakes is to­day, and Irish Guineas win­ner Ros­al­lion is ex­pect­ed to prove a warm or­der. An­oth­er fea­ture event will be the Nas­sau Stakes on Thurs­day, which should be a bat­tle of the gen­er­a­tions with 1000 Guineas win­ner El­mal­ka and Coro­na­tion Stakes run­ner-up Opera Singer tak­ing on two Gos­den fil­lies, Emi­ly Up­john and In­spi­ral. A fas­ci­nat­ing race is in prospect. On Fri­day, the sprint­ers take cen­tre stage with the Aussie speed­ball, As­foo­ra, who blitzed her ri­vals in the King Charles II Stakes at Roy­al As­cot, re­new­ing ri­val­ry with run­ners-up Big Evs and Be­liev­ing. If TTT does not up their game by Wednes­day, sports fans would be bet­ter off switch­ing their at­ten­tion to oth­er sports.

So lis­ten when all else fails, turn to horse rac­ing to make you smile, and head to San­ta Rosa Park; thank­ful­ly, I can view it even in Paris on YouTube with­out fear of fail­ure to de­liv­er.