Bettors’ Suspicions Concern Officials

When Tim Smith, the commissioner of the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn., brunched with industry leaders last week at a Beverly Hills hotel, Rick Baedeker, president of Hollywood Park, posed a timely question.

“What can we do about the final odds not showing on the tote board until the horses turn for home?” Baedeker asked.

Smith didn’t have a ready answer and, for now at least, neither does anyone else in the sport.

“This is all linked to the consumer-confidence issue,” Smith said. “It’s a problem we have as an industry. We’ve got to take a deep, thorough look at all aspects of wagering technology.”

Today is another opening day at Hollywood Park -- the track’s 35-day fall meet runs through Dec. 22 -- and Baedeker no doubt is thinking about what happened when his track’s spring-summer season opened in April. A maiden filly left the gate in the first race at 9-2 odds, but by the time she reached the wire, 3 1/2 lengths in front, her price had plunged to 2-5. Even winning bettors were puzzled and angry. A $2 win ticket, instead of being worth $11, paid only $2.80.

At the time, it was only a blip on the public-confidence screen, explained away by last-second bets totaling $118,000 that went through a hub in Lewiston, Maine. Those bets, made in denominations of $3,000 and $5,000, represented 91% of the total win pool on the winning horse and brought a quick profit of $47,200.

Now, when viewed through the prism of the questionable winning pick-six tickets at last month’s Breeders’ Cup -- bets worth more than $3 million that might never be paid because they are suspected of having been placed four races into the pick six -- Hollywood Park’s opening-day first race is perceived by jaundiced horseplayers as a precursor of bigger scams.

It’s not a pretty landscape out there for track managers like Baedeker.

The Daily Racing Form, which usually runs a full page of readers’ letters about a variety of topics on Sunday, published nothing but responses to the Breeders’ Cup pick-six fiasco last Sunday.

“Absent the integrity of the betting pool, there is no point in ever making a bet on horses again,” was a comment from Oklahoma.

Another cynical opinion came from Kentucky, heartland of the thoroughbred breeding industry in the U.S.:

“Until the obvious design flaw in the system is rectified, betting the pick six requires belief that every person involved in administering and operating the system is honest. That is a leap of faith I am not prepared to make.”

Another letter, from Florida, referred to tracks like Hollywood Park pinning dramatic during-the-race odds shifts on simulcast betting:

“If they have no other solution, then they have to stop accepting bets at least three minutes before the start of a race. Bettors may not like that, but we prefer it to cheating and being robbed by computer-savvy thieves.”

The investigation into the Breeders’ Cup pick six broadened Monday when Donald Groth, president of the Catskill Off-Track Betting Corp. in New York, told the Thoroughbred Times that he had turned over to authorities the name of a third person who may be questioned. That person, a Catskill betting account holder who was not identified by Groth, is believed to be an acquaintance of Derrick Davis and Chris Harn, who have been linked to the possible scam.

Davis, who bet $1,152 on the pick six through a new Catskill account, held the only winning tickets on the pick six, and Harn, a fraternity brother of Davis’ in college, was fired Thursday by the Autotote Corp., whose officials said that he had access to the system and could have altered tickets after the first four races were run.

Payoffs have been held up on the pick six. Attorneys for Davis and Harn have said that their clients will be cleared of wrongdoing.

Roger Licht, vice chairman of the California Horse Racing Board, said that the fallout from the pick six is more detrimental to the game than a race-fixing scandal.

“One thing that might happen is that all the needed attention that’s being focused on the operations of the tote companies might detract from the energy usually expended on sniffing out improper backstretch activities,” Licht said.

With more scrutiny than ever, track executives are monitoring the sizes of their pick-six betting pools. At California tracks this year, more than $100 million has been bet on the pick six. The tracks heavily promote a pick six when a day or days go by without anyone picking the winners of all six races, resulting in a carry-over pool with the potential for a huge payoff. The Hollywood Park payoff record for a pick six, set in 1998, is $928,127.40. The national record, set at Bay Meadows in 1985, is $1,132,466.

During the last five days of the Oak Tree meet that ended Sunday at Santa Anita, betting on the pick six did not appear to have suffered. Comparable-day studies of the pick six are sometimes difficult because of the carry-over factor. Last Saturday, for example, Oak Tree offered a guaranteed $1-million pick six on California Cup day. The track did not have to supplement the pool, because the handle totaled $1.3 million, with the benefit of a two-day carry-over of almost $360,000. On Cal Cup day the year before, the pool for another guaranteed $1-million pick six totaled $1.2 million, with a one-day carry-over of $82,000.

What did drop on Cal Cup day was track attendance, which with an attractive card had been expected to surpass the crowd of the year before. Instead, the gate count was 27,901, a decline of more than 30% from 2001.

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Hollywood Park Facts

Dates: Today-Dec. 22 (35 days)

Post time: 12:30 p.m., except for 7 p.m. on Friday and Nov. 15 and 11 a.m. on Nov. 28.

Major races: $250,000 Hollywood Turf Cup (Nov. 23), $200,000 Miesque Stakes (Nov. 29), $200,000 Hollywood Turf Express (Nov. 29), $500,000 Citation Handicap (Nov. 30), $200,000 Generous Stakes (Nov. 30), $500,000 Hollywood Derby (Dec. 1), $500,000 Matriarch (Dec. 1), $200,000 Hollywood Starlet (Dec. 14) and $200,000 Hollywood Futurity (Dec. 21).

Leading trainer (2001 meet): Bob Baffert (22 wins).

Leading jockey (2001 meet): Alex Solis (30 wins).