Two Las Vegas Racebooks Drop Bay Meadows Betting

Two Las Vegas racebooks, the Stardust and Desert Inn, have dropped wagering on Bay Meadows racing in light of charges of betting irregularities in Las Vegas.

John Van Rhyn, manager of the Desert Inn racebook, said there has been “highly irregular” betting patterns on longshot horses running at Bay Meadows.

Bob Gai, an investigator with the California Horse Racing Board, would neither confirm nor deny the presence of an investigation and said he was instructed by the CHRB not to talk about the situation.

“There were some unusual things happening up there,” Van Rhyn said. “There would be races where you get all your money from people walking in off the street on one particular horse that was going off at odds of 7, 8 or 10 to 1. In the Racing Form, the horse doesn’t look like it has the potential to beat the other horses, yet he wins.”

Van Rhyn would not name the dates or the races that these incidents had occurred. He said he turned all his information over to Bay Meadows track security and did not want to hamper their investigation.

Scotty Schettler, the racebook manager at the Stardust, said it was “a business decision” to drop Bay Meadows and would not elaborate.

James Conn, president of Bay Meadows, issued this statement: “We believe that the sport of horse racing, which is under the supervision of the California Horse Racing Board, is operated in a clean and above-board manner. We have seen no evidence that these allegations are true. We welcome any investigation to prove the sport is clean in this state and any such investigation will receive our full cooperation to eliminate any possibility of undesirable activity.”