March 24, 2019. That is the day the Jumbo Jet Thoroughbred Racing Committee (JJTRC) and the Kennard Memorial Turf Club (KMTC) will host their respective race meets.
JJTRC will stage the second leg of its Triple Crown series at the Rising Sun Turf Club, while the traditional KMTC Phagwah meet will be staged at the Bush Lot venue, Corentyne.
The meets will inevitably clash and turfites, jockeys, sponsors and stable owners will have to choose which event they will support.
Both the JJTRC boss, Nasrudeen Mohamed Jr. and KMTC head, Cecil Kennard agreed that it’s not and both made arguments to Stabroek Sport about sticking to their dates.
“The horses, the jockeys and the crowd would be split. It’s not a good thing for horse racing,” said Kennard yesterday.
Mohamed Jr. stated:“Having two meets on one date isn’t good for horse racing as there’s only a few thoroughbred horses in Guyana and Kennard has no races on his programme for horses like mine.”
Mohamed was adamant that he would not be rescheduling.
“I have spent hundreds of thousands already in promoting. I also printed calendars for my year event that was posted on the internet and distributed in the USA etc.”
Mohamed stated that his dates were selected ahead of Kennard’s announcement.
“The JJTRC selected our race dates for 2019 since November 2018 and published to all the Racing Secretaries for all the tracks in Guyana.
Nothing was mentioned when I published my dates, so we confirmed our dates and went ahead and printed 10,000 calendars and started to distribute. Many of these calendars were distributed on Mr. Kennard’s Boxing Day horse race meet on December 26, 2018, that was the day he released his date.”
Kennard did admit to Stabroek Sport yesterday that he did announce his dates on Boxing Day but reminded that the Phagwah meet has been the club’s tradition for 40 years and he is “very disturbed” and feels bullied.
“We all know that clubs have traditional dates and I feel it is unfair for another club to clash with us. We have been running this meet for 40 years and this is the first time that the Rising Sun is hosting a meet in March.”
Said Mohamed “Our committee was well aware that Mr. Kennard usually has a Phagwah horse racing meet. Sometimes before Phagwah or sometimes after. As an organized committee, we couldn’t wait for an unorganized club to release their dates.”
“We are sticking to our traditional date, I think it’s best for Jumbo to move his date forward,” Kennard insisted.
Both men agreed that they are open to siting down and ironing out a solution.
Said Kennard “We can sit down as big men and come to a compromise, we have no problem with that. I am open to having a meeting to iron out the issues of a clashing of the dates. We don’t want the public to feel that the clubs are fighting. We don’t want that at all.”
Kennard’s sentiment was echoed by Mohamed Jr.
(Emmerson Campbell)
