SANTA ANITA : Stewards Facing Problem: Should Owners, Trainers Be Allowed to Double as Touts?

Should horse owners and trainers be allowed to double as touts and handicappers? That’s a question under consideration by the Santa Anita board of stewards.

Trainer Roger Stein has requested approval by stewards to participate in a 976 call-in handicapping service. Stein is co-host of a morning radio show on racing and, like many local trainers, has appeared at numerous handicapping seminars. He said he would avoid giving choices in any race in which he runs a horse.

The stewards’ first reaction was negative.

“Trainers have unique responsibilities,” senior steward Pete Pedersen said. “I’m not sure that having a trainer give out selections would be in the best interests of the sport.”

Pedersen cited racing rule 1873: “No licensee or employee of a racing association or employee of any concessionaire of the racing association shall furnish a handicap or selection or racing prediction to any racing prediction or selection service or to any tipster sheet.”

“Licensees” include trainers, owners, jockeys, jockey agents, bloodstock agents, stable agents, exercise riders and stable help.

“Fine,” Stein said. “I have no problem with that interpretation of the rule, as long as they enforce the rule consistently.”

Apparently, the stewards have not. Several license-holders, most of them owners or part owners of race horses, also earn money giving out selections, and for years the officials have looked the other way.

Whether or not the practice is necessarily bad is open to argument. In the current “information age” of handicapping, the public seems hungry for all manner of intelligent advice. It stands to reason that trainers--and in some cases owners--would be closer to the inner workings of the game and be able to impart insight.

Before leaping into a ruling on Stein’s request, the local stewards have asked for a legal opinion. Cathy Christian of the state attorney general’s office is reviewing precedents and interpretations.

“I don’t have any clear answer at this point,” Christian said Wednesday. “Though I do believe that the intent of the rule was to prohibit licensees from engaging in that kind of activity. Whether or not the rules actually cover that, I’m not sure.”

Jeff Siegel hopes not. As a handicapper who has a 900 telephone line, a publication and a newspaper syndicate, he would have a lot to lose. Siegel is also vice president of Clover Racing Stable, which buys, sells and runs thoroughbreds under a number of limited partnerships.

“Obviously, the stewards are worried about Roger touting horses he doesn’t train, or he’s running against,” Siegel said. “That can be sticky, and I have been faced with that proposition.

“Owners have the reputation of being too high on their horses,” Siegel said. “But, if anything, I think I’m tougher on our horses than the others. I’ve had partners ask me why I picked our horse third. ‘Because I like two horses better than him,’ I tell them.

“I know it’s a tightrope,” Siegel said. “But I’ve had no complaints (from the stewards). I try to be objective about my own horses, and if people don’t think so they don’t have to listen to me.”

In attempting to parlay his name as a trainer into a handicapping service, Stein is merely following track tradition of wearing more than one hat.

Trainers don’t only train horses. They buy them, sell them and earn commissions in the process. Exercise riders double as parking attendants, outriders or jockeys’ valets. Some jockey agents have had second jobs as mutuel clerks.

“A lot of people need two jobs around the race track just to make ends meet,” said John De Santis, who is content to be known only as Corey Black’s agent.

When it comes to apparent conflicts of interest, however, the lines are difficult to draw. Stewards and management are sympathetic to those who need the additional income, but there have been times when two roles mesh in all the wrong ways.

Pete Pedersen had a vivid lesson in conflict of interest when he first became a racing official.

“I had been a handicapper for the San Francisco Chronicle just prior to getting on at Santa Anita as a patrol judge,” the steward recalled.

“Shortly after I started, I was called in by the stewards and (director of racing) Carleton Burke. They told me what a serious matter it was for an official to be putting out a handicap.

“It turned out that the Chronicle had continued to carry my name on the handicap after I’d left,” Pedersen said. “I thought my career at Santa Anita had lasted three days.”