Winning Pick Six Bet Costs $8

It only cost a South Dakota bettor $8 to nail the Breeders’ Cup pick six, which resulted in a $2.6-million payoff Saturday at Santa Anita.

The winning ticket was bet at an off-track betting parlor in Rapid City. The man making the bet, who has not been identified, hadn’t cashed his ticket by late Sunday.

“It was a combination of guts and good handicapping,” said Ken Kirchner, a senior vice president of the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn.

Last year, the winning Breeders’ Cup pick six, which would have netted three bettors more than $3 million counting consolation payoffs for having five winners, turned into scandal. The three men, one of whom was a computer technician for Autotote, the company that processed the bet, were found to have waited until after the first four races were run before making their bets. All three were convicted of fraud and are serving prison sentences.

Autotote promised that a better system would be in place for this year’s pick six.

“There were no irregularities this year,” Kirchner said. “The winning ticket is clean.”

Kirchner said that the California Horse Racing Board was satisfied that the winning ticket was legitimate. The bettor used only one horse in four races--the Mile, the Filly & Mare Turf, the Turf and the Classic. He bet two horses each in the other two races.

Six Perfections, a 5-1 shot, started the Pick Six with a win in the Mile. The other winners were Cajun Beat (22-1) in the Sprint, Islington (5-2) in the Filly & Mare Turf, Action This Day (26-1) in the Juvenile, High Chaparral (9-2) and Johar (14-1), who dead-heated in the Turf, and Pleasantly Perfect (14-1) in the Classic. Islington was the only favorite.

This was the seventh time a pick six was offered at a Breeders’ Cup. The record payoff is one ticket worth $3 million in 1999. Saturday’s ticket will return $2,687,611.60. Forty-eight consolation tickets, with five winners, were worth $18,663.80. The pick-six pool of $4,489,454 was $2 million short of the Breeders’ Cup record, set in 1998.