NY Bidders Will Have Options
All nine members of the Committee on the Future of Racing in New York met on Monday to discuss the recent testimony given by more than 50 racing industry executives, NYRA officials, and interested members of the public and to consider how best to proceed with the bidding for the state’s racing franchise. The committee members agreed that the land NYRA’s three tracks sit on is owned by the state (a contention that NYRA strongly disputes), and will likely offer bidders multiple options for submitting proposals:
Bids would be based on three scenarios — that the system of racing stays as it is; changes moderately; or undergoes a drastic change.
“You could bid on whichever one you prefer,” said Commissioner Bernadette Castro. She said bidders also should have the option to include OTBs in their proposal.
They’ll need that option because NYRA and the OTBs are separate entities, competing against each other, and New York racing law may or may not be overhauled in the next couple of years to reform this dysfunctional system. At least one lawmaker is warning potential bidders that it won’t. “I wouldn’t count on any sweeping changes in racing law. That doesn’t happen here,” said Racing & Wagering Committee chairman Gary Pretlow.
More from Alan at Left at the Gate:”The upcoming bidding process for the New York racing franchise took on the feel of a Chinese restaurant menu …”
No Races = More Money
Anyone who wants to know how truly messed up New York racing is must read this New York Times article on Yonkers Raceway, which
Despite running no races since June, when it closed to install video lottery terminals and make some renovations … continues to be paid millions of dollars a year from four Off Track Betting Corporations in the state, including $3 million from the corporation operated by New York City alone.
This arrangement makes, as readers might expect, no sense from any angle.
Friends of New York Racing is out with its final report that calls for just this sort of nonsense to disappear. The organization, headed by former NTRA commissioner Tim Smith, proposes a complete restructuring:
FONYR wants the state to completely rewrite its racing law to not only make it less complex and burdensome, but also to permit any entity — for profit, not-for-profit, and joint ventures that could include off-track betting corporations — to bid on the franchise. Smith said the law should make the bidding “permissive and wide open.”
The group said the 2006 changes in the law should also expand account wagering to include Internet wagering; some sort of customer loyalty programs, such as rebates; and to cut the pari-mutuel industry’s tax burden. Additionally, the group said the state should legalize video lottery terminals at Belmont. (A 2001 law forbids VLTs at Belmont and Saratoga.) The report also calls for consolidation into a single state agency to do the work of several agencies that now oversee lotteries, casinos, and racing.
In the longer term, which the group defines as much as two years out, Smith said the competing parties must come to a resolution after several decades of the “OTB situation” –the OTB parlors and racetracks are separate entities. The state, FNYR concluded, needs to restructure the current law that has led to fierce infighting between the tracks and OTB corporations.
It will be interesting to see what influence FONYR has in the coming year. I’m skeptical, but a correspondent quite knowledgeable about New York racing has written to say, “I believe Tim Smith is working magic behind closed doors. I am convinced he’s showing how useless the OTB system is, and that even though they generate a lot of money, it’s operated in a defeating manner.” Maybe …
Snow May Be Falling …
But NYRA would like your requests for reserved Saratoga seats now, please. NYRA opened the reserved seat auction application period for the 2006 meet in mid-November and is accepting requests until December 23.
Whether NYRA will be in charge of New York racing come next August, though, is a matter of some speculation: New York state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno is calling for the New York racing franchise to be awarded in the next six months “to ensure the continued viability of racing in the state.” NYRA’s franchise is set to end in 2007. Bruno isn’t ruling out the possibility that the organization could continue to hold the franchise if it was bid out before then:
“I think if NYRA partners in the right way [it] would be very viable, but they’ve got to partner in the right way,” he said.
What exactly the “right way” would be wasn’t defined by the state senator. A state oversight board, which recently blocked NYRA’s attempt to auction equine art with an estimated value of $2 million and is likely to refuse it the right to sell 80 parcels of land near Aqueduct worth up to $20 million, suggested that NYRA raise takeout to stave off its impending insolvency. President Charles Hayward said that if NYRA is forced into bankrupty, possibly by the end of this month, racing would not be affected.
Related: “New York state’s incredibly selfish and short-sighted politicians have really done it this time,” says Bill Heller.
12/7 News: “New York Racing Association executives pleaded to state officials Tuesday to help them avoid taking the 50-year-old operation into bankruptcy, and their pitch didn’t fall on deaf ears.”
More on Weightgate
The indictment last week against two former NYRA officials for falsifying jockey weights raises “serious and disturbing questions,” writes Steven Crist (Daily Racing Form — sub. req.):
What is perhaps most troubling about the entire matter is the way that it was addressed when it first began to come to light. NYRA officials have said that they initiated the investigation when they heard about possible improprieties at the scale more than a year ago. The appropriate response would have been for someone to step in and put a stop to it immediately. Instead, apparently because NYRA was operating under a deferred prosecution agreement and all sorts of regulatory scrutiny, paralyzed officials turned over their concerns to prosecutors rather than intervening themselves.
An investigation commenced, including surveillance at all three NYRA tracks, and evidence was collected on 67 “incidents” in 59 races run between June and December of 2004. In effect, then, it appears that investigators knowingly allowed these races to be run under tainted conditions for months in order to fatten the indictments against the clerk of scales and his assistant.
It is difficult to see how this approach protected rather than further deceived the public. Instead of fixing the problem, investigators appear to have allowed it to continue, in order to build a better case.
Also in the DRF, Matt Hegarty reports on the allowances officials make for jockey weights before and after races:
According to the racing officials, the clerk of scales typically subtracts the weights of helmets and safety vests — which are required equipment in all jurisdictions — before and after a race from the official weight and will many times give allowances for any dirt, water, or sweat that a jockey and his equipment will pick up during a race. In addition, in many jurisdictions, riders carry more equipment to the scales after a race than before, and that weight is also subtracted from the official post-race weight.
“Let’s say a guy checks in with 115 pounds, and that’s without the helmet and the jacket,” said Victor Sanchez, the clerk of scales at Calder Race Course in Miami. “You’re going to expect him to come back 118 or 119 because now he’s got the jacket and helmet, and he’s carrying the saddle girth which soaked up a lot of sweat plus his pommel pad and saddle, and if it’s muddy, then you’ve got all that dirt and water, and that stuff is heavy. You still mark 115. That’s just logical.”
Seems logical. But did investigators know officials made such calculations? That’s one of the questions raised by the indictment, which alleges that the five cited jockeys rode from seven to 15 pounds overweight. Hegarty notes:
In nine of the races, the riders were assigned 120 pounds or more. At a minimum of seven pounds overweight, that means the jockeys would have weighed 127 or more, or at least 11 pounds more than what any of the jockeys claimed was their regular riding weight.
Put that way, the allegations sound even more preposterous.
Ripped Off?
So … following the news that former NYRA officials have been indicted for reporting false jockey weights, racing fans and anyone who bet on a NYRA race in 2004 should be outraged, right? After all:
… the defendants, acting in concert with the co-conspirator jockeys, fraudulently obtained compensation from the owners for riding, and deprived bettors of hundreds of thousands of dollars by misrepresenting the jockey’s weights and thereby tricked said bettors into betting on said horses.
But I did a spot check of the results of the races specifically mentioned in the indictment, and here’s what I found:
| Date | Track | Race | Horse # | Odds | Finish |
| June 23 | Belmont | 7 | 1 | 48-1 | 5th |
| July 11 | Belmont | 3 | 10 | 14-1 | 3rd |
| July 17 | Belmont | 8 | 9 | 41-1 | 9th |
| August 16 | Saratoga | 1 | 11 | 52-1 | 9th |
| August 16 | Saratoga | 2 | 4 | 23-1 | 7th |
| August 30 | Saratoga | 6 | 6 | 24-1 | 12th |
| November 6 | Aqueduct | 9 | 4 | 11-1 | 3rd |
| November 7 | Aqueduct | 8 | 10 | 55-1 | 8th |
| November 12 | Aqueduct | 1 | 8 | 94-1 | 7th |
Bettors seemed to do a pretty good job of assessing the alleged affected horses’ odds, even without the overweight information. Could this be because weights aren’t all that relevant to most handicappers? This shouldn’t be taken as a defense of wrongdoing — but I am wondering if the attorney general’s office isn’t being a just a bit overzealous in its prosecution of this case.
More: Bill Finley reports in the New York Times that evidence was gathered using surveillance cameras in the jockey’s room and that in at least one stakes race, a horse carrying too much weight won: “According to the indictment, the scheme included 10 stakes races, including the Cigar Mile, run at Aqueduct. Santos won the $350,000 race aboard Lion Tamer, who was reportedly carrying 115 pounds with Santos aboard.”
About those extra pounds: The indictment alleges that jockeys rode anywhere from seven to 15 pounds overweight. That’s a lot. “It sounds a little far-fetched to me,” said retired rider Eddie Maple to Times-Union writer Tim Wilkin. “I rode at 116 (pounds), and you could tell if I put on 2 pounds. That’s a lot of weight in our game.”
About
Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
Elsewhere
Find Jessica on Pinboard and Instagram, Railbird on LibraryThing and Twitter.
Etc.
Links
Search
Boston Racing
Spreadsheets/Data
← Home
Copyright © 2000-2026 by Jessica Chapel. All rights reserved.