Racing will happen this weekend - Darby

United Racehorse Trainers Association (URTA) President Ryan Darby has assured that there will be no disruption to this weekend's race meet at Caymanas Park despite the current impasse with Supreme Ventures Racing and Entertainment Limited (SVREL).

"There are no such plans to withdraw any of our horses which will allow for the disruption of racing," Darby said.

URTA and SVREL have disagreed about the decision to recover money for operational costs incurred by SVREL during the COVID-19 lockdown. This would be done through reducing the purse money offered to races.

As part of the deal, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was agreed with industry regulators.

Expenses incurred

"The MOU stated that if racing resumed on June 1, SVREL would recover the sum of $13 million, which represented expenses incurred during May and would be collected through equal instalments to the end of the year," SVREL General Manager Lorna Gooden said in a press release.

"If racing resumed on July 1, the amount would be $26 million representing the expenses incurred in May and June and collected through equal instalments to December 31."

Gooden said that "since racing resumed on June 20, SVREL prorated the amounts for the actual race days and applied costs of $611,111.11 for both race days in June. We also advised the stakeholders that a monthly recoverable sum of a little over $3.4 million will be applied for the remainder of the year."

However, Darby said this is difficult to take and he is urging Supreme Ventures to rethink its decision.

"The last meeting that we had, they said they would have taken half of the amount for June, which we have rejected and we are at standstill there," he said.

"They are not budging further from the half and half that they have proposed.

Darby said that further dialogue is planned for next week.

"We have a town hall meeting on Monday to discuss this among other issues affecting racing," he said.