For al­most a decade the coun­tries of the Caribbean have had to re­ly on the Ja­maican-owned Sports­max Sta­tion for its cov­er­age of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al sports. While its cov­er­age of in­ter­na­tion­al sport, where­by it mere­ly re-broad­casts events be­ing cov­ered by our tele­vi­sion sta­tions, is a wel­come re­lief to the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty, broad­casts for which it is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble have be­come the bane of our sport­ing ex­is­tence.

It is prob­a­bly too much to ex­pect one to ex­ist with­out the oth­er, but it is cer­tain­ly not too much to have ex­pect­ed Sports­max to have upped their game over the many years in which they have been do­ing the sport­ing cov­er­age them­selves.

Sport­ing fans are still smart­ing from the sub-par cov­er­age pro­vid­ed of the 2024 Paris Olympics where­in the arm­chair in-stu­dio hosts seemed to lack many of the ba­sic com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and even sport­ing knowl­edge that might be ex­pect­ed of such hosts – set­ting aside the col­lo­qui­al Ja­maica bias.

The 2025 Carif­ta Games cov­er­age, how­ev­er, must be the fi­nal straw if this re­gion is to achieve the high­est stan­dards pos­si­ble .

When it was an­nounced that the 2025 Carif­ta Games would be host­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there was con­cern over whether cov­er­age would be avail­able lo­cal­ly. These fears were al­le­vi­at­ed, and giv­en that the events cov­ered three nor­mal­ly qui­et days of Sat­ur­day, Sun­day and Mon­day (not in­clud­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Fri­day), it promised a feast for lo­cal en­thu­si­asts un­able/un­will­ing to go to Port-of-Spain.

Giv­en the pauci­ty of the lo­cal horse rac­ing scene on East­er Mon­day, the events would and should al­so have pro­vid­ed a use­ful dis­trac­tion on what was tra­di­tion­al­ly one of the best horse rac­ing days in the coun­try in the past.

How­ev­er, for many with a sport­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion of qual­i­ty and aware­ness of the im­por­tance of tele­vi­sion in sports, the cov­er­age start­ed poor­ly and on­ly went down­hill from there.

Clear­ly our broad­cast­ers do not op­er­ate with the same bud­get as their over­seas coun­ter­parts, but is that the on­ly rea­son our cov­er­age is so poor? From the po­si­tion of the tele­vi­sion cam­eras to the com­men­tary pro­vid­ed on the events them­selves, our Caribbean view­ers are left gasp­ing for prop­er cov­er­age.

On too many oc­ca­sions to be bad luck, the ath­letes are cross­ing the fin­ish line, and the cam­era is aimed some­where else. On too many oc­ca­sions to be bad luck, the com­men­ta­tors seem to have no idea as to the names of the ath­letes in the races – with the ob­vi­ous ex­cep­tions of the Ja­maican com­peti­tors (some ear­ly re­search and prepa­ra­tion would as­sist in ad­di­tion to the num­bers on the chest of all ath­letes).

For those ath­letes from Ja­maica, we are pro­vid­ed with too much in­for­ma­tion – we know what high school they at­tend­ed, maybe even the pri­ma­ry school, the names of their teach­ers, coach­es, etc.

Noth­ing is wrong with per­son­al­is­ing the ath­letes, but it should be uni­ver­sal if it is to hap­pen and not just fo­cused on per­son­al­is­ing the ath­letes from one coun­try. It should be stat­ed that there were pro­files on some Trinidad and To­ba­go ath­letes, but what about the oth­er coun­tries: the Ba­hamas, St Lu­cia, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, Aru­ba, and the US Vir­gin Is­lands?

How dif­fi­cult would it have been to re­quest the var­i­ous coun­tries to each se­lect two or three stand­out ath­letes and send video high­lights of them for the broad­cast­er to utilise if it was too ex­pen­sive for Sports­max to send a team to each is­land to con­duct such a thing? In these mod­ern times and with ad­e­quate tech­nol­o­gy, this can be done with prop­er plan­ning .

The post-race in­ter­views al­so leave a lot to be de­sired – what ex­act­ly is that in­ter­view­er try­ing to find out … cer­tain­ly noth­ing that is of in­ter­est to the view­ers.

The ex­changes on many oc­ca­sions be­tween the in­ter­view­ers seem al­most ju­ve­nile in their na­ture, not the sort of pro­fes­sion­al cov­er­age that we would have come to ex­pect from the view­ing of many in­ter­na­tion­al ath­let­ic events such as the Di­a­mond League, etc., but alas, maybe we are ask­ing too much.

Can I sug­gest talk­ing with the lead­ing track and field an­a­lyst Ato Jabari Boldon for the req­ui­site ad­vice go­ing for­ward if we ex­pect to raise the bar?

Sports­max has to do more to make them­selves a tru­ly re­gion­al broad­cast­er, and this has noth­ing to do with whether they es­tab­lish phys­i­cal pres­ences in all coun­tries.

The pro­fes­sion­al­ism of their broad­casts needs to im­prove. Why would some­one pay to stream broad­casts that ap­pear to be done on a shoe­string bud­get? If they want to play in the big league, they must in­vest more.

To the ex­tent that Sports­max can be­come a tru­ly re­gion­al sports broad­cast­er, this can have a very pos­i­tive im­pact on sport in the Caribbean since they, in turn, might be able to at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al spon­sor­ship, and the at­ten­tion gath­ered by the lo­cal sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions may im­prove their own abil­i­ty to rein­vest in the sport’s ac­tiv­i­ties. This is not an easy task, but to achieve qual­i­ty , it de­mands in­vest­ment .

On the lo­cal horse rac­ing front, as ex­pect­ed, East­er Mon­day rac­ing was a pale im­age of past glo­ri­ous years. For­mer cham­pi­on train­er Glenn Mendez had a great day win­ning with his on­ly two run­ners on the day’s card (his third run­ner was with­drawn at the start) and con­firmed his abil­i­ty to get the best out of his run­ners.

The fact that the Trinidad hors­es which trav­elled to Bar­ba­dos to con­test their races on Sandy Lane Gold Cup day have been un­able to re­turn to this coun­try pro­vides more fu­el to the ar­gu­ments against trav­el­ling hors­es be­tween coun­tries.

Thank­ful­ly, one of them which trav­elled to Bar­ba­dos, Hel­lo World, was a win­ner; oth­er­wise con­nec­tions would won­der aloud over the fu­til­i­ty of mak­ing the trip. The oth­er hors­es strand­ed in Bar­ba­dos were not so for­tu­nate, and so their con­nec­tions must be ru­ing the ad­ven­ture.

Hope­ful­ly, they will be back soon­er rather than lat­er.