SVREL to revisit scaling down plans

Chairman of Supreme Ventures Racing and Entertainment Limited (SVREL), Solomon Sharpe, says he will be meeting with the board of parent company, Supreme Ventures Limited (SVL), today to discuss the proposed scaling down of operations at Caymanas Park.

The racing promoters recently announced that starting this week, they will scale down operations at the track to four days only, from Monday to Thursday. The company said that it had to take this decision because of what it describes as "severe disruptions and the immense impact" of the novel coronavirus on the country's economy, in particular, St Catherine.

It says that for the weeks of May 11 and May 18, the main racetrack will be open for operation for three days only, Monday, Tuesday and Friday, and for the week of May 25, the main racetrack will be open for operation for two days only, Monday and Friday.

This decision has not gone down well with various stakeholders at the track and they have staged two protests while calling on SVREL to withdraw the plans to scale down operations. "I will still have to go back to Supreme (Ventures) board tomorrow (today) to see if I can get anymore leeway because it takes cash," Sharpe said yesterday.

$15 million cost

Sharpe, who was speaking during a virtual press forum yesterday, underlined that it still takes a lot of money to maintain the track when there is no live racing at the park.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if the racetrack never had a horse on it and we turned off the electricity, it still costs $15 million just to manage that plant. The racetrack will be in tip-top condition when it needs to be in tip-top condition and you don't worry about that," Sharpe said.

"We won't have any issues resurfacing the racetrack because we never said we were abandoning the racetrack, we say we are scaling down," he said.

SVL board director Christopher 'Chris' Berry, who was also a member of the panel, noted in a release from the promoters that while the future remains uncertain, SVL stands behind SVREL and will go the necessary lengths to preserve and maintain horse racing in Jamaica, a tradition which goes back 300 years.

"Persons are being misinformed that SVL is not committed to horse racing. We have been totally committed to it and have been improving the product on many fronts; we are 100 per cent behind SVREL," Berry said.