Paying to keep the parasite alive

“Based on the huge disadvantages of the condition and claiming system touted by the writer, I would ask how has the system survived for 27 years, and survived to such an extent that a Supreme Ventures, a body of hardnosed investors, purchased the business two years ago? With the flight of breeders, owners and other parties, racing should be dead today.”

AMOST appropriate comment, made by a reader of my most piece, ‘Caymanas running lame’, part two of which appeared shortly after.

An astute editor with a double-edged sword, but a fair mind beneath his horned helmet, has allowed a prequel to delve into the biggest misconception by onlookers and, indeed, even persons within horse-racing circles, who have been fooled by the so-called ‘survival’ of the racing industry.

A parasite is not an instant killer, it actually allows the host to ‘survive’, untreated, before all sustenance is sucked out, which is exactly what has been gradually happening to the racing industry under the parasitic system of claiming and condition racing at Caymanas Park for the last 27 years.

Richard Lake, a former director of Caymanas Track Limited (CTL), pointed out in a conversation surrounding the two-part article that horse racing at Caymanas Park was profitable, for up to 10 years, after the board on which he sat had introduced the claiming and conditions system in 1993.

The success in handle that Lake’s board got with the 1989 installation of a new totalisator, $80 million to $91 million, 1989-1990, spurred by the system being able to process bets such as the exacta, trifecta and Pick 6, started under handicapping and rating, which lasted for four years into that administration’s 14-year tenure.

The gradual addition of other bets such as the Pick 9, with its big jackpot, excited punters, allowing the bounce, which started under handicapping and rating, to be maintained through 1993, when claiming and conditions were introduced, for another 10 years, using Lake’s argument, coinciding with a new board taking over in 2003.

However, while this was happening on the front end, the parasite – claiming and conditions – was at work at the back end, the base of the industry, afflicting owners, who saw where it made no sense to continue in a pastime which required investing millions of dollars in horseflesh and keep-andcare, only having to put their horses up for sale via claiming races in order to earn purse money. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; hence breeders, reeling from the loss of decades-long customers, either diversified, left the business or significantly scaled back on their operations, importing fewer horses, which, in turn affected the quantity of yearlings and, of course, in a hit-and-miss industry, quality of young horses produced.

The fleeing owners were also importers of horses for racing purposes, animals which, prior to the introduction of claiming and conditions, were expected to be, and were, of a certain standard because they were not allowed to race below a particular class, B2 specifically.

The horse population started taking knocks on two fronts, resulting in a reduction in competitive events among local-bred and quality imported runners, because the standard was lowered, resulting in ordinary foreigners being imported, over time, and allowed to start their careers much lower in condition races, which replaced the handicapping and rating system.

Bettors, most of whom had cut their teeth on English racing, handicapping and rating, were absolutely appalled by a system that now allowed connections of horses to do as they like, dropping horses from high claiming tags to mid-level, and from mid-level to the lowest group, leaving win pools with no betting value, whether on-track or with bookmakers, triggering a gradual exodus of lifelong punters.

Instead of acknowledging the parasite, subsequent CTL boards dug in their heels and bought into the argument that the claiming and condition system had led to the emergence of a new breed of owners, which, in the main, turned out to be either trainers, who were left stuck with horses abandoned by owners, or their former assistants, who had acquired trainers’ licences, some of whom primarily did so because they were owners who could no longer afford to pay training fees under the decimation occurring.

DIRE SITUATION

The deeper the respective government-appointed boards dug in on this premise, the more dire the situation became, the handle decreased and government intervention, purse bailouts and taxes forgone, increased to the equivalent of US$40 million up to the time of divestment. Not to mention Jamaica Racing Commission-sponsored racedays and the $70 million-peryear Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Commission Diamond Mile, which will have its fifth and, supposedly, final running this year, possibly because Lake’s wife, Lisa Hanna, opposition spokeswoman on foreign affairs, veered off track and bawled it out in parliament in March of this year.

It is in this situation that Supreme Ventures Limited (SVL), through Supreme Ventures Racing and Entertainment Limited (SVREL), found the near-dead racing industry two and a half years ago, its sustenance all but sucked out, but was somehow convinced that the cure existed in ‘tweaking’ the claiming and condition system, despite then Finance Minister Audley Shaw declaring former SVL chairman Paul Hoo, “the bravest man in the room”, to take on Caymanas Park, on ending his speech at the first Diamond Mile launch.

After two and a half years of ‘tweaking’, which involves creating more categories of horses under claiming and conditions from a depleted horse population, more jockeys continue to leave their families in Jamaica for the freezing climes of the backwoods of Canada because they can’t earn a living locally. Grooms are still left wondering if they will have a source of income and horse in their care after leading their charges to compete in a claiming race, and the stable area remains a filthy and run-down place for derelict vehicles to be discarded, upsetting horsemen, because SVL was thought to be Santa with a big, red bag of cash.

Therefore, to answer the reader, the local-racing industry hasn’t died as yet because SVREL has added enough blood, paying purses within a week, to keep the parasite alive.