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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.”

Posted in NY Racing Issues on December 5, 2005

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.

Posted in NY Racing Issues on September 25, 2005

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.”

Posted in NY Racing Issues on September 21, 2005

NYRA Officials Indicted

Last December, New York state police raided NYRA offices for an investigation into jockey weights. The New York Post reports this morning that NYRA officials, including suspended chief of scales Mario Sclafani, will be indicted today for falsifying jockey weights:

Sources say the indictment claims that officials failed to report the accurate weights of the jockeys before the races and lied about their weights afterward — cheating bettors out of accurate data to make well-informed wagers and allowing “people who knew of the fraud” to have a definite edge when it came to picking winners.

The sources were unable to say whether investigators uncovered hard evidence that the indicted NYRA officials profited directly from betting on “tampered” and “tainted” races.

A spokesman for Spitzer declined comment and wouldn’t reveal which officials were involved. Sources say Spitzer’s probe also targeted Sclafani’s top deputy, Braulio Baeza, a Hall of Fame jockey who won 3,140 races in a 16-year career.

More details: NYRA clerk of scales Mario Sclafani and assistant clerk of scales Braulio Baeza were indicted this afternoon in Saratoga County court on charges of falsely reporting jockey weights (Blood-Horse). The two officials, both suspended from work since January, were immediately fired by NYRA.
The 116-page indictment also names several jockeys as un-indicted co-conspirators:

The indictment alleges Sclafani and Baeza conspired with five prominent jockeys — [Jose] Santos, Robby Albarado, Herberto Castillo Jr., Ariel Smith, and Cornelio Velasquez — on 67 different occasions between June 2004 and December 2004 to allow them to ride when they weighed as much as 15 pounds over* their announced weight.

“Co-conspirator jockeys then rode horses in races and thereby caused the horses to carry in excess of five pounds over the designated weight,” the indictment alleges. “In so doing, 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.”

According to the indictment, the jockeys (including, in addition to the five named above, Aaron Gryder, Pablo Fragoso, Jorge Chavez, and Oscar Gomez) paid Sclafani and Baeza their riding fees for the races in which their overweights were misreported.
The New York Attorney General’s office has issued a press release and the full text of the indictment.
NYRA responds to the indictment: “… NYRA has terminated the employment of former Clerk of Scales Mario Sclafani and former Assistant Clerk of Scales Braulio Baeza effective immediately. NYRA suspended Sclafani and Baeza on January 12 when the allegations first came to light and appointed Timothy D. Kelly as the Acting Clerk of Scales. Since then, the association has instituted a number of reforms, including the use of digital scales at each of its three racetracks…. In providing background to today’s announcement, NYRA President and CEO Charles E. Hayward emphasized the association’s role in initiating the investigation and its ongoing commitment to complete transparency to ensure the integrity of racing.”

Posted in NY Racing Issues on September 21, 2005

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