KINGSTON, Jamaica - The rewriting of Rule 88 of the Jamaica Racing Commission’s (JRC’s) Racing Rules 1977 has caught the attention of mostly trainers at Caymanas Park.
The new rule reads: “No horse claimed in a claiming race shall be sold or transferred, wholly or in part, to anyone within 30 days after the date it was claimed, except in another claiming race. Additionally, no horse claimed in a claiming race by a trainer on behalf of an owner shall be transferred to another trainer within 30 days after the date it was claimed, except in another claiming race”.
Some of these trainers shared their thoughts on the new rule.
Rudolph Hardial: I am in total agreement with the new claiming rule because you have some owners that claim horses and, in a week, they go and give other trainers the horses and so I like it; I have no problem with it.
Gregory Forsyth: I think it should be scrapped because we don’t have enough horses to claim as the claiming pool is very small. If it was going to be an issue then they should have allowed the trainer to have like five owners claiming for one horse and so we would have alleviated that problem of everybody trying to ask other trainers to claim a horse. What you need to understand is that when an owner wants a horse, he would ask other trainers to claim that horse and whenever he does get the horse, he would want a particular trainer to train for him, and based on that, I think the rule should be scrapped.
Gary Griffiths: It is a crazy rule as what you are doing is penalising the owner and bonding him to the trainer. I mean, if the owner falls out with the trainer, you are telling him that he cannot race the horse, it makes no sense. Owners have the right to do whatever they want to do with their horses as if the owners have a fallout with the trainer, in a week or two, they can move the horse. This is just something that they (JRC) are doing right to prove power which makes no sense; the claiming thing is there and a lot of people claim horses, some will get and some won’t get; that’s just it.
Nicholas Smith: The new claiming rule makes no sense to me. Say, for instance, you as a trainer claiming a horse for an owner and then you and then owner fallout, the owner then will want to move his horse to another trainer. I don’t see where the 30-day rule makes sense.
Randolph Scott: I think that the rule that they made is a stupid rule. The trainer has nothing to do with it; if the trainer and the owner should have a fallout, then the owner will have to move his horse (s) and so you can’t put a 30-ban on the horse. I don’t agree with that.
Ray Phillips: I think that rule is a foolish move and I don’t really support it. Sometimes horses are hard to get and have some trainers put in many claims. People want horses; horses are in short supply, so people will do anything to get a horse and so I don’t really like this new rule.
