OKAHANDJA – Horse owners have expressed dissatisfaction over the Namibia Horse Racing Association’s (NHRA) failure to name the winner of the coveted Import Open 2200m category.

This comes after the NHRA failed to decide the winner of the final and biggest race of the day, where three horses had a tight finish. 

Without proper technology and equipment to decide a photo-finish race, the association couldn’t decide on the winning horse.  However, the association told horse owners they would look at all the videos from different angles over the week and decide the winning horse.

Speaking after the event, Mannes Hendricks, the president of NHRA, assured the horse racing fraternity that a decision would be made by the end of the week. He said experts would be roped in to properly scrutinise the videos and decide the winner.

“As we are moving from semi-professional to professional, we are in the process of procuring the latest international technology to help us determine the real winners. We usually have one that belongs to Athletic Namibia (AN), but they couldn’t assist us because they also had an event today,” Hendricks said.

This sparked a huge controversy, as three owners each claimed their horse had won the close race.

Touching on how they would address the shortcoming soon, Hendriks said, “NHRA, together with our sponsor MTC, will be working hard to secure the latest technology to avoid this type of confusion heading forward. We will have the results in the next five working days,” he said.

Meanwhile, Katjaku Mootu, whose horse was in contention, believes the results would not be fair if the horse owners were not involved in the process  of determining the results. He added that he hoped the experts being roped in would be fair enough to crown the deserving winner of the race.

“The final race didn’t end well because they should not have hosted an event of this magnitude without cameras or proper equipment to decide the real winner of the race. 

Now we have this problem at hand: deciding who the real winner is. Everyone is claiming their horse won the race, so without cameras, it is difficult to decide which horse won the race,” he lamented.

Also reacting to the race, a representative from Aminius Racing, who fielded a horse in the race, said they hoped the decision on the winner would be made on merit. The next event is slated for 20 March in Gobabis. - mkambukwe@nepc.com.na