The 2023 rac­ing sea­son kicks off on Sat­ur­day (Jan­u­ary 28), 27 days lat­er than it usu­al­ly does.

How­ev­er there is noth­ing usu­al about horse rac­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go and it re­mains to be seen how this cur­rent sea­son un­folds over the next few months. With one rac­ing day a month the on­ly re­al­is­tic op­tion, giv­en the pauci­ty of the coun­try’s rac­ing stock, lo­cal rac­ing en­thu­si­asts could be look­ing at a max­i­mum 12 rac­ing days for the year. No doubt the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) will try to stage more race days than one in cer­tain months, but if that is the cur­rent hope, it seems op­ti­mistic at best.

The new sea­son kicks off with the tra­di­tion­al open­ing fea­ture, the Sian’s Gold Sprint on the turf over 1,100 me­tres. Giv­en the im­proved weath­er con­di­tions over the last cou­ple of weeks, it is high­ly like­ly that the race will be con­test­ed on the tar­get­ed sur­face. As with all of the ma­jor fea­ture races over the last cou­ple of years, the field com­pris­es to­tal­ly lo­cal or West In­di­an bred hors­es, none un­der the age of four year olds.

A com­pet­i­tive group has nev­er­the­less paid their sub­scrip­tions for the event and any one of the sev­en could win the race. The high­est rat­ed horse in the race is the Stew­ards Cup win­ner, Gen­er­al JN. This now eight-year-old horse was a sur­prise 18/1 win­ner from Top of the Game (14/1) who re­op­pos­es. The Gen­er­al is a pri­or win­ner of the Sian’s Gold Sprint and so has proven form on the sur­face. While his rat­ing sug­gests that he will be hand­ing out up­wards of 5kg to his ri­vals, the ab­sence of light jock­eys in this coun­try re­sults in al­most every one of his op­po­nents in­cur­ring ad­di­tion­al weight which sig­nif­i­cant­ly shifts the bal­ance in favour of the Gen­er­al. While the bal­ance shifts, it does not mean that the Gen­er­al is a lock since all his ri­vals have shown good form, even when car­ry­ing sig­nif­i­cant amount of over­weight in the past.

Fol­low­ing his nar­row de­feat to Gen­er­al JN in the Stew­ards Cup, Top of the Game re­turned to score an easy vic­to­ry over his class on the last rac­ing day of the 2022 sea­son. With a proven abil­i­ty to sprint and stay, the on­ly ques­tion mark with this fil­ly is her abil­i­ty to han­dle the turf sur­face, hav­ing nev­er com­pet­ed over the sur­face in her short ca­reer. Her sire, Crime of Pas­sion, has pro­duced hors­es who can han­dle the sur­face and so the chance must be strong that she will al­so be able to do so.

The race that was ear­marked as the prep race for the Sian’s Gold was the 80 and low­er mod­i­fied bench­mark event over the trip and sur­face on the last rac­ing day. The first four fin­ish­ers from that event all re­turn to con­test the Sian’s Gold Sprint. The win­ner that day, Mar­vel Vig­or car­ried 8kg over­weight, was in­stalled favourite nev­er­the­less and score an un­con­test­ed win. He will be re­quired to car­ry over­weight once again but may not be able to dom­i­nate his ri­vals in the same way.

Two of his ri­vals, Cool Cat and Su­per Bird, who were third and fourth re­spec­tive­ly went in­to the prep af­ter lay­offs of vary­ing de­grees and are cer­tain to strip much fit­ter on the day. From a weights per­spec­tive, in spite of the over­weight, Su­per Bird still gave 3kg to Mar­vel Vig­or and end­ed up go­ing un­der by less than three lengths (though Mar­vel was eased down). Any change in that weight dy­nam­ic (which won't be known un­til race day) could change that equa­tion. The sec­ond place fin­ish­er, Pawan Pu­tra, came from a very long way back and will need the lead­ers to du­el them­selves in­to de­feat to have a re­al­is­tic win­ning chance though he rep­re­sents an out­stand­ing each­way bet.

The big un­known com­ing in­to the event is Ar­salan, a horse with proven turf form, who de­feat­ed Mar­vel Vig­or over 1,500 me­tres in May 2022. While that dis­tance is at the ex­treme end of Mar­vel Vig­or’s stay­ing prowess, Ar­salan is not de­void of speed. His form since May has been some­what spot­ty rac­ing over a va­ri­ety of sur­faces but he can­not be ruled out of the event with any con­fi­dence.

As stat­ed at the on­set, the Sian’s Gold Sprint will be a very com­pet­i­tive event. Train­er Glenn Mendez has a strong hand with both Gen­er­al JN and Mar­vel Vig­or hous­es in his sta­bles. The win­ner could come from ei­ther of his two and he will be mind­ful to ad­vise his jock­eys to not du­el each oth­er in­to de­feat.

While the sur­face will be turf, it could mat­ter what side of “Good” it turns out to be. While most have form on any sur­face, hors­es rac­ing over the sur­face for the first time would then to pre­fer a firmer sur­face while Mar­vel Vig­or has shown a greater affin­i­ty for a soft­er sur­face than many of his ri­vals. Hope­ful­ly, the race pro­vides fan with a thriller and sets the stage for a 2023 sea­son that is must hap­pi­er for the rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty than 2022.

Good luck to all!