Of Scams & Scandals
If, as seems possible, racing’s latest scandal is mostly about offshore betting and tax evasion, it’s unlikely that the investigation into race-fixing and rogue gamblers will ever make it into a book like the soon-to-be published in the US, “Flat Racing Scams and Scandals,” by Rupert Mackeson (Metro Books), which covers 200 years of skulduggery and wrongdoing in racing. It’s good to be reminded that the sport is resilient — this scandal won’t be the one to kill it off. (The book is listed for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble; be aware that the promotional copy is about a book called “What Cats Want.” A big oops, for whoever sent that data file.)
Related: The New York Daily News reported this weekend that “The race fixing probe that has scandalized the sport of kings has expanded from Aqueduct to the state’s showcase tracks, Saratoga and Belmont…. A court-appointed monitor overseeing NYRA has questioned numerous former and current NYRA employees about race fixing at the three tracks, the sources said. The employees turned over information on several races where the odds dropped significantly just before post time.”
That doesn’t sound good, but I’ll withhold judgment until more is known (especially given the Daily News’ breathless coverage of this whole thing so far). Last week, I was feeling quite cynical about this investigation and the early responses it engendered from various officials. I think I may have been wrong. We might see standards for drug use and testing and rebate shop operations made more uniform in the near future. In the past week, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylania, New Jersey, and New York have endorsed uniform medication rules and testing standards — the first time regulators from so many jurisdictions have agreed on such a policy, and NYRA and Churchill Downs have cut their signals to the betting shops named in the indictments of January 13, although whether that is the right response is open to debate, as Matt Hegarty reports in the DRF. I feel hopeful.
