Jimmie says | Racing promoter versus property manager

CAYMANAS Park was developed on a model departing from what existed at the island’s previously established racetracks, the last two in the Corporate Area being Kingston Racecourse (now National Heroes Park), which was later moved to Knutsford Park, on lands now known as New Kingston - hence the business district’s main artery, Knutsford Boulevard, being named after the former horse-racing venue.

The hop across Dawkins Pond to Caymanas Park didn’t happen by chance. Downtown Kingston had outgrown its space and a new commercial district became necessary, voilà New Kingston, no more Knutsford Park.

Alexander Hamilton of Caymanas Estates donated the land, and Bartholomew Vicens Oliver, an architect who had come to Jamaica by way of Santo Domingo and Panama to study English, was the man who added Caymanas Park to his design résumé, which includes the Hunts Bay Power Plant and Red Stripe Brewery.

The British influence on local racing meant that horses were not kept at racetracks. Instead, they were stabled at trainers’ respective ‘yards’, at private stables away from the track. North American tracks (here we go again), however, facing competition to keep horses domiciled at their many venues, started offering free lodging at racecourses.

Among the racetracks Vicens Oliver had visited on his quest to settle on a design for Caymanas Park was El Commandante in Puerto Rico. Though a Caribbean island, Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States and, of course, horses were stabled at El Commandante.

In his bid to emulate El Commandante’s stabling of horses but at the same time tweaking (oops, where have we heard that word before) the concept of trainers having their own ‘yards’ as opposed to the row-like barns observed in Puerto Rico, Vicens Oliver decided to spread stables all over the 196 acres at Caymanas Park, unwittingly leaving a legacy of despair for successive promoting companies.

Therefore, every single promoting company to have graced Caymanas Park started with an albatross around its neck, picking up the tab of accommodation for private owners of racehorses. It wasn’t all that bad back in the days. However, expenses then are nothing compared to what they are now. There is a well-known list of entities that tried being charitable property-management companies and horse-racing promoters at the same time.

Last week’s article reminded just how much North American racing depends on casino money to pay purses. Local racing has no such godfather. It is the promoting company that has to scrounge to pay every bill from the crumb of sales, 70 per cent of which is returned to the punter as dividend, lest we forget.

How can one ever be surprised that every promoting company has failed at Caymanas Park, having to pay salaries, taxes, and maintain the entire plant, including utilities, for the people to whom they pay purses to compete in races?

Richard Lake will be quick to intervene, saying that his board, under Caymanas Track Limited (CTL), was viable until demitting office.

Kudos to Lake whose board rode the wave of technology to benefit from a new totalisator system, spawning off-track betting parlours, exotic bets such as the Pick 9, Pick 6 and, most important, introducing what has become the lifeblood of promoting companies, simulcast of overseas racing, which does not require the operational expenses of its local counterpart.

However, the board that preceded Lake’s got a sucker punch, similar to what Gulfstream received last week, when the Fair Trading Commission ruled that bookmakers could start selling bets on local and overseas events during the running of local racing at Caymanas Park, removing the long-established one-hour to post-time shut-off mandate.

In order to pursue viability, the promoter of local racing should never be playing the role of charitable property manager for private racehorse owners. Nominal stall fees should be charged to take care of upkeep and utilities, possibly metering every stable, which could teach its occupants a thing or two about conservation.

Responsibility for the stable area should fall under the remit of the landlord, CTL, which should, in turn, establish a company, working in tandem with whoever is the promoter, to ensure that only horses positively contributing to sales are domiciled on the compound. Yearlings and two-year-olds are to be broken at farms then brought in saddle-ready for training.

The promoting company’s business is the racetrack and its attendant tentacles – stands, administrative offices, and reshaping Caymanas Park’s idle acres into income-generators to subsidise purse money, benefitting all and sundry.

Ainsley ‘Jimmie’ Walters has been covering horse racing for more than 25 years for the Gleaner Company (Media) Limited and is the editorial and production coordinator for the Track And Pools race form.