JIMMIE SAYS … More big-day race meets necessary

Last Saturday’s Diamond Mile racecard attracted a whopping 141 entries spread over 11 races, including at least 11 genuine grade-one runners in the $10m feature event, which rewarded PHENOMENAL POWER’s winning connections with $5.5 million.

Sponsored by the Jamaica Racing Commission (JRC), taking over the mantle from the Betting Gaming and Lotteries Commission (BGLC), under whose banner the first five events were run up to 2019 — the Diamond Mile then offered the richest purse for a single race in the English-speaking Caribbean, US$115,000, since surpassed by the US$300,000 Mouttet Mile.

A major feature of both the Diamond Mile and Mouttet Mile has been additional prize money for the supporting card, which, using Saturday as an example, had its fourth event offering a total of $1.5 million for three-year-old maidens (horses yet to win a race at age three), the same category of runners who had raced for $1,050,000 the previous Saturday.

Before advancing, let’s clear up a bit of a misunderstanding in the public domain. Prize money for races, referred to as purse money, is not wholly and solely awarded to the winning horse and its connections. It’s not a lottery in which the jackpot is won by the first horse past the post.

Total purse money is first docked nine per cent, creamed off the top, a sum which goes to the breeder of the winning horse, after which there is a winner-to-sixth-place breakdown - 60, 20, 10, five, three and two per cent, respectively, of the remaining sum.

Therefore, for Saturday’s enhanced maiden race, the total purse of $1.5 million was first docked by $94,500 going to the breeder of the winner. Connections of the winner, through sixth place, each picked up $843,300, $281,100, $140,550, $42,150 and $28,100, respectively.

Note the word ‘connections’, which introduces a secondary breakdown, detailing percentages earned by the owners, trainers, jockeys and grooms for winners to sixth-place finishers.

From the winner’s share of 60 per cent ($843,300), the owner gets 70 per cent, trainer 15, jockey 10, and groom five per cent, respectively, as winning ‘connections’. The same percentage breakdown applies for connections of second to sixth-place finishers.

Hence, the owner of FOLLOWING WAVE, who won Diamond Mile Day’s fourth race, netted $590,310 as opposed to PROSPERITY SEN’s owner bagging $401,310 the previous Saturday, a difference of $189,000.

For an owner who would have possibly purchased a horse as a yearling in 2024, for a median $2 million, being unraced as a two-year-old, which constitutes 90-odd per cent of most local-bred horses, possibly another $800,000 to $1 million would have been expended by January 2026 when the animal reaches three years of age.

Add $500,000 by mid-2026 and an owner would have been in by $3.5 million, chasing $401,310, a sum which, with a little luck, if set aside, could take care of the year’s remaining expenses.

Every cent an owner spends greases the wheel of horse racing. Therefore, owners must be incentivised in every way possible to keep chasing their tails. First, top-class races such as the Diamond Mile and Mouttet Mile are musts in order to incentivise owners who see their route to glory as being through imported horses such as the bulk of Saturday’s Diamond Mile field.

The JRC should thus be commended for committing $15 million to Diamond Mile Day, $10 million to the feature and $5 million supplementing the undercard. However, the BGLC needs to now step out of the shadows and join the JRC with an event rivalling or surpassing Diamond Mile Day, coinciding with Easter, the year’s first major holiday period.

When the BGLC ended its sponsorship of the Diamond Mile in 2020, Executive Director Vitus Evans made a rather odd comment that the decision was made before the then ‘coronavirus situation’.

Quoted by The Gleaner on April 7, 2020, Evans stated:

“(Last year) we decided to support the purse to about $30 million, and we still found that difficult to justify in terms of the amount we spent, and so we had informed SVREL that we won’t be able to sponsor it this year,” Evans shared.

“We had indicated even before [the] COVID-19 [pandemic] that we wouldn’t be able to afford it,” Evans said. “However, even if we were to review it and look at that decision again, then it is certainly not possible at all in terms of what is happening with COVID-19.”

Post-COVID, in its 2020-2021 report, the BGLC, which does not regulate horse racing, collected $75.6 million from horse racing, yet could not ‘justify’ even a watered-down version of the Diamond Mile.

Now that the BGLC is reaping far more than $75.6 million annually from horse racing, an audited $154.36 million for 2024-25 and estimated $178.51 million for 2025-26, it appears rather justifiable that owners have more than a case to start banging on the doors of 78cef, Hagley Park Road.