The following is extracted from an article, entitled “No Teamwork”, published in September 2023 by Jeffrey Mordecai, attorney-at-law, a distinguished, long-serving owner and breeder, as well as the sitting vice-president of the Thoroughbred Owners & Breeders Association:

“Government’s running of the horse-racing industry in Jamaica for many decades was a disaster happening right in front of our eyes and getting progressively worse. We, who love the sport, largely ignored the reality because of the hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans directly and indirectly involved in and benefiting from the industry, who we thought it was government’s responsibility to protect.

“Do the current stakeholders remember the multiple $50,000,000 ‘bailouts’ by the Government to alleviate the late payment of purses in the period prior to the IMF’s dictate to divest? That was taxpayer’s money that went up in ‘smoke’ because the racing industry was insanely expecting improved results by doing the same thing.”

Mordecai and this writer will not be getting a response any time soon, if ever, as the majority of stakeholders believe the racing product delivered in this claiming system format is viable. This “same thing” is trying to offer the racing product in a flawed claiming system, ensuring the unlikelihood of the projected revenue exceeding the operating expenses of the promoting company.

Strangely enough, although this “for many decades was a disaster happening in front of our eyes and getting progressively worse”, horse racing did flourish in Jamaica for 32 years. From 28 race meetings in 1960, the first full year of the 1959 Caymanas operations, there were 84 meetings in 1992 with an average of 115 horses in an average of 11.23 each race day, driven by the falsely maligned handicap system.

With the installation of a digital platform with multiple of betting options, more than the four of win, place, quiniela and double events and the increase in OTBs from 27 to 67 in 1990, the promotion of racing achieved profitability for three years. There has to be a return of the racing product that facilitated this growth.

The 1993 introduction of a complicated claiming system, mimicking the failed USA product, continues to be inappropriate for the local industry. The horse population is still divided into over 20 categories, resulting in smaller unprofitable fields with a huge number of odds-on favourites rendering inferior horses conceding weight to superior horses as a feature. The unviability of the promoting company has been guaranteed since January 23, 1993, with the launch of the existential threat to the industry posed by claiming.

The Government Levy Scheme, funded by the licensed bookmakers, was germane to the development of the sport generally and the breeding industry benefited particularly. At its peak, ownership of horses in Jamaica neared 1,000 and the 25 stud farms’ annual foal crop exceeded 300 with many exported to Trinidad & Tobago (T&T).

Incidentally, speaking of T&T, in 2010, with more affluent owners than those in Jamaica, the stakeholders were also duped into switching to Claiming only see their annual calendar plummet from 44 race days to 13 in 2024 with average field size averaging between six and seven per race day. The T&T racing industry is all but beyond resuscitation. The local racing industry is headed in this same direction and the trajectory has to be reversed with a viable racing product.

“Those stakeholders who are currently dissatisfied with SVREL’s stewardship of the Jamaican Racing Industry must take into account that what is at stake is the very survival of the live segment of the racing industry. SVL/SVREL replaced Government and is attempting to introduce private sector principles like profitability and fiscal and financial prudence, given that no further “bailouts” are possible from SVL shareholders who have no interest in their money going up in smoke. The above is also an excerpt from Mordecai’s “No Teamwork” publication.

I am of the same view as Mordecai that teamwork is necessary, in that there must be a collective understanding of the problem and that SVL/SVREL was the correct successful bidder. As I have been positing since 1993, it is not necessarily complicated claiming tags and conditions of entries that is the main source of the problem. It is the non-classification of the horse population that has deterred the industry’s development despite the country’s 30-year population and economic growth.