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D ESTI NATI O N

PRIME LOCATION

One of the most important aspects of the new racetrack
facilities is the quarantine system. St Lucia is centrally
located between Miami, FL, South America and other
Caribbean nations, such as Trinidad and Barbados. The
Royal St Lucia Turf Club is working to make the import
and export of equines as seamless as possible in order to
make it more attractive for those countries and others to
compete there.

“We want to eventually start leagues among different hope to raise the standard in St Lucia. We will be doing
islands and have involvement from the Caribbean,” classroom education, as well, and horse husbandry. Soon we
Cunningham said. “The horses in quarantine would go out will have St Lucians training, riding races and exercising.
early and local horses would go after so they would only We already have a St Lucian boy in Barbados training to
cross paths on race day. St Lucia is working with the OIE, be a jockey.”
the World Organization for Animal Health, now, so we
qualify and become a Category 6 member. There is also Initially, there will be enough barns to house 500-600
a tri-partide agreement between Jamaica, Trinidad and horses, but the track will have the ability to expand as the
Barbados, so we are going to try and join that so we can race population and popularity increase.
inter-island.” “The goal with the quarantine is so horses can
come in and leave after the race,” Teo added. “We don’t need “People will see the joy of racing down here,” Cunningham
800 to 1,000 horses to allow weekly races. They can come said. “We will start the programme very soon and will build
in batches. The quarantine part is a very important support on that. The Caribbean needs an influx of new ideas, so this
of the race population.” is the perfect time for us. You can get away with having 400
horses run twice a month, every month. That is what they
Teo also hopes the smooth quarantine process will attract are doing in Trinidad, but it would be nice to have more.
interest from China to come to the island to buy horses. We are planning on eventually having enough stables for
800 to 1,000 horses. We plan to organically grow and have
“The horses can race here and the Chinese can come in to it grow with us.”
buy and export them to China,” Teo said. “For China, the
Caribbean is one of the areas that is relatively untouched, so “Once it is built and managed properly, I think St Lucia
it is a new market, a new frontier for tourism in China. We will be right on the lips of everybody,” Teo said. “I think
target the Chinese here and they come and learn about the the season is more important to sustain and build up. You
racing. It is the new hidden bonus and will send us off to a need to have consistency throughout, rather than one big
new level.” race. The big race is good for marketing and branding, but
it doesn’t help betting, etc.”
The racetrack is already in progress and when it is complete,
the next step will be to bring in the horses and set up
training and licensing programmes. The Royal St Lucia
Turf Club will be accepting trainers, jockeys and grooms
licensed by other nations until their programmes are fully
operational.

“Puerto Rico has a very good groom, jockey, farrier school
and we want to model ours after them,” Cunningham said.
“Hopefully trainers will come from abroad and have St
Lucians training under them. Same with veterinarians. We

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