This year, the Jamaicans have not been able to sent any of their best three year olds for the Trinidad Derby at Santa Rosa, but the luckless and in some respect the talentless Barbadians rightfully have stayed at home.

In traditional fashion though, we are again looking at who will be last in 2001. In 2000, we got it right, so the double is the objective of this analysis ( which took all of five and a half minutes).

What follows, we hope is understood, for what it is, an analysis of the inability of the ability of the three year olds on display. In a race that requires ability to win, we look at the disabilities that lead to 15th and last place.

The outsiders for this contest are easy to diagnosed, their pedigree suggests that they will be doing their best work at the business end of the race, and will not leave their owners bankrupt and in debts, they are money earners for the racing club and the money takers for the betting public.

Carnival Messaih is at 1500-1, to place dead last in this field, as too are Phantom Menace and Splitting Image.

However recent gallops suggests that Phantom Menace , may in fact not be 100% fit.

Already there is some interspersed betting for the John O'Brien pair of Bound to Win and Hail the Groom who are both priced at 500-1 . If there is one sign it is that not many pilots are expected at the track on Saturday.

Trinidadian poker players, turned Gamblers on Race days are putting their well earned cash on Barbadian based Richard Hibbert not being able to steer Colour of the Wind the right way around this track, and he may find himself in some difficulty racing backwards.

In the meanwhile, while all jockeys jostle to stay out of this last place betting, the bookmakers (and now there are fewer and fewer and fewer) or the OTB's are not taking any betting on this, for fear of a back lash from concerned and knowledgeable customers. Did I remind everyone that this bet is only available in certain parts of Trinidad not even in Tobago.

At 250-1 is Balthazar . Renewed interest in Little Miss Muffet has forced her odds downwards to 100-1.

After some moments of positive conviction , odds on IndianNightingale have lengthen from 100-1 to 150-1 ( without a Running nose).

Now though the real betting begins, because at 16-1 to carry her large frame past the winning Post, as the others unsaddle is Honey Bunny .

At 10-1, we have a bunch of contenders and queue of gamblers waiting to lay on these prices, the Bookies are a little concerned that some trainers and owners connected with several of the contenders are generously unloading blue notes as the odds drop on their horse. Aye Aye has drift from 10-1 to 8-1.

El Guerroj is at 3-1 and there are a lot of takers and there has been the need for an additional cashier to be called upon to assist with the situation, as the crowds are swarming to the $100 minimum bet line. .

In fact, what was observed was that on Friday, a number of binoculars were astonishingly bought at a number of Port of Spain establishments, merely with the race in mind and with a view to see their particular contender for the last place competition battle his/her way home.

The three favorites are two talented sons and a daughter of the soil, they are homebred and locally ridden, they will have no excuses and on their day would take a lot of beating in this race, though, the conditions of the betting and the distance of the race ( 2,000 metres ) suggests that theirs will be a tussle to the line.

At 1-2 is Piece of Cake, with Colour of the Wind quoted by most layers at 2-5, while Bite the Bullet at 1-9 is the outright favorite.

Between the three of them though there is a private bet as to who will do better than who, in fact, their connections all believe as do the other 12 owners, that they can gain a place in the valuable contest.

If wishes were horses maybe..................................

The other day I fell into conversation with a group of younger people who have a wide interest in sporting activity and think themselves typical of a rising generation.

I was bemoaning, as we all should, the clamour of scandal that fill the sports pages and broadcasts these days, and makes television presentation of sport seem more fatuous than ever.

Immediately, I sensed the suppression of a yawn. You see, a truth, and a hard truth for some of us to swallow, is that the majority of younger folk are not deeply disturbed when evidence of chicanery in sport is set before them.

For example, the festering issue of who has been up to what in the International Cricket was shruggingly dismissed as inevitable in an era of rampant commercialism and therefore not worth bothering about.

No sports scandal sets off more indignant editorials than charges of narcotic assistance, but modern cynicism dictates that very few track and field athletes are now held to be above suspicion. "What else can you expect when the rewards are so great, when winning can set a person up for life," one of my young friends stated," The Jamaicans will forever believe that Merlene Ottey is innocent, no matter the conclusive evidence,"

We have to understand that Sport is now big business and that everything related to it, revolves around money, and therefore Sports administrators need to consider how to make their product more entertaining. Merely building a cricket academy or building several football stadiums is inadequate and only seeks to confirm, that administrators in their current form think only as far as they can touch.

Whenever something occurs to cast sport in an unfavorable light, somebody is quick to say, "The authorities should have anticipated this, " or " past administrations would never have stood for it."

On some occasions that may be so, but if it's true, as it appears to be, that values have got screwed up, how did this come about?

Some of you may find it astonishing to discover that only 20 years have passed since amateurism was still so vigorously upheld in athletics that the American high jumper Dwight Stones was ordered to hand back around $33,000 won in a televised Superstars competition. Shortly afterwards, Stone came as clean as he possibly could when disqualified in Poland for a technical infringement. "This is my living," he complained to the judges.

Nowadays, the urge to take up sport is often the urge to make a great deal of money. The tone of sport in the last decade of this millennium has been set by the elite, the richest games people who have sweated their way up to prodigious salaries, are admiringly interviewed by sycophants and receive the adoring attention that was once reserved for movie stars.

If sport has acquired a sense of modern reality, it is no less an admission that all things are not better than they used to be. The juxtaposition of the sports and financial sections in most newspapers is appropriate. Escalating salaries, share issues, ludicrously inflated transfer fees takeovers, ever-increasing prize-money, and spiraling sponsorship.

Are we as a society viewing this whole lack of interest by the young in cricket and football as hopeful myopia. If so, why?. The answer dawned while I was reading -Mobydick-, the bible of obsession, which provides a special sort of reading pleasure when you substitute the word "hero" for whale: "It is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valor in the soul...That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves...bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man"

A clue to sport future lies, I believe, in the growing and perhaps irreversible conviction of the young that most things are acceptable as long as they don't dampen the lust for entertainment.

Bearing that in mind it is easy to conjure up - hell, it's impossible not to imagine - what an ugly face sport will present to the world in the world of tomorrow.