by Ed DeRosa and Frank Angst
Two regulatory bodies and two racetrack associations have initiated separate investigations into a past posting incident on the third race at Fair Grounds Race Course on November 25, but so far, only the person who admitted to making the bet has called it anything but an isolated incident.
Mike Maloney, a high volume horseplayer who bets $6-million to $12-million annually on horse races and sometimes as much as $10,000 on a single race, came forward on December 6 at the Symposium on Racing and Gaming to admit placing late wagers on the Fair Grounds race from Keeneland Race Course.
An official with the New Orleans track initially said that betting was stopped within 15 seconds of the start of the race, but Maloney had proof to the contrary.
Steve Sexton, executive vice president of Churchill Downs Inc., which owns Fair Grounds and three other tracks, said on December 14 that wagering went on longer than initially thought.
“Fair Grounds off time is 1:32 [CST] as designated by the chart, and the stop betting time is 1:33.24, so the gap was more than 15 seconds,” Sexton said. “We just don’t know if it was 25 seconds or longer.”
Maloney said he would stake his personal reputation on the fact that he was able to bet the race at least 45 seconds into it, but his concern is not with the particulars of the race but rather that betting after the bell happens at all.
Sexton said that Churchill’s investigation into the incident showed that this was an isolated incident, but Maloney said that he has witnessed pools failing to close at the bell before.
“This was a technical error followed by a human error,” Sexton said of the stewards’ stop wagering button not functioning followed by the tote room’s delay to close the pools manually once the race started. “The person in the tote room did not fulfill duties in terms of performing backup. That allowed wagering to occur after the race had begun.”
J. Curtis Linnell of the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau said that his organization has looked into the Fair Grounds incident in particular as well as the general issue of past posting. In the long term, he would like to see better fail-safes in place should the pools not close at the bell.
“There needs to be a better way to ensure that occurs,” he said. “Isolated then becomes exceptional.”
Sexton added that he has not encountered this situation in his six years with Churchill but that he is aware of it happening at other tracks during the course of his career, including an incident in 1992 at Thistledown when he was general manager of the Cleveland-area track.
“When people question, ‘Does this really happen?’ I think a lot of top executives honestly think this doesn’t happen,” Maloney said. “Yes, this can happen, and this will happen. I’ve seen it on a regular basis—not 55 seconds, but I’ve seen five, eight, ten seconds. It’s not every race, but it is at an alarming rate.”
Fair Grounds stewards looked into the incident on behalf of the Louisiana Racing Commission, and, like Churchill, found this to be an isolated incident. Sexton did not have exact figures related to betting after the bell, but said that the mutuel department reported the figure as negligible.
“The last wager received was for $2,” Sexton said. Maloney made four wagers after the bell that mirrored the wagers he made before the race, and all were losers.
Because Maloney made his wager at Keeleland in Lexington, the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority also has gotten involved, approving on December 17 the formation of a committee to look at past-posting wagering issues.
Authority member Tom Ludt said the committee should be in place by January and will include himself, Authority member Frank Kling, Authority Executive Director Lisa Underwood, Maloney, racetrack representatives, and horsemen.
“I think what we have to do is step back and analyze. What is the current protocol? How did this happen? And, how often is this happening?,“ Ludt said.
Rogers Beasley, director of racing at Keeneland, said the Lexington track is looking into the problem and wrote a letter to the Authority outlining what happened. Still, Beasley pointed out that host track Fair Grounds is responsible for stopping wagers after the race starts.
Beasley said Maloney was only trying to make a point when he continued to make wagers after the race had started.
The teller who continued to take wagers after realizing that the race had started did not violate Keeneland policy because current rules only require tellers to stop taking wagers after the pools close.
“That’s why we wrote the letter, saying you know, we’re going to look at our policy. The law reads that it’s when the windows close, and the window wasn’t locked,” Beasley said.
Underwood noted that the incident further suggests the need for independent monitoring of pools, like the Wagering Transmission Protocol real-time software offered by Racing Commissioners International. Without such software, time-consuming review of the pools is required to determine problems in the pools.
She added that the Authority would begin interviewing applicants for the new position of pari-mutuel investigator, which will oversee such issues in the commonwealth.
“I think this is a major issue and may not be an isolated case,” Ludt said. “We will try to verify why this happened and how much of a problem it is. It could be a major, major issue.”
Ed DeRosa is news editor of Thoroughbred Times
Frank Angst is senior staff writer of Thoroughbred Times