Racehorse TALK

I find it interesting that you think that "successful"  (Leading)trainers were unlikely to use drugs but "unsuccessful" ones would?? I would think it was more likely the winnners are the ones that should come under the microscope at least as much as the losers, after all they have the money to pay for only the best and the best allows them to be winners, no one should be assumed to be innocent based on "why would they risk their reputation"
Are they really looking drug cheats?? do they really want to find any drugs that might be in racing?? Do they really want to risk that kind of Publicity??
Another thing I find interesting is that they can't even find Arsenic!! christ it has been around since Adam wore short pants!!
How would they be able to keep up with the latest Designer Drugs of Choice if they can't even detect Arsenic?? How serious do you think they really are about finding Drugs in racing??

I think its a reasonable question Peter Mair asks.

Why can they find all or a lot of the minute betting that takes place on penalty goals but racing stewards can never detect people betting on suspect horse races.

When a trainer gets done for drugs do they look into the betting details of the said horse ? Who put what bets on what horses ?

I do not think its a bad question. 

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/876199

14 minute mark

Why is there no Lab in the Southern Hemisphere that can even Check for Arsenic?? does that mean you could poison your enemies with Arsenic and never be found out?? now that is food for thought

Racing to the Olympics: this is more like the real story on gambling related corruption

Eventually the stewards management of integrity in racing will need to deal with the more relevant threats  -- the question is about when the stewards will start using the same tactics to track stings in racing as they have to track sports betting rorts..


British Sports minister wary of fixing at Olympic Games

BETTING-driven corruption, rather than doping, is the biggest threat to the London Olympics in July according to British Sports minister Hugh Robertson ..... match-fixing is the single biggest obstacle to the staging of a controversy-free Games.

"You cannot underestimate the threat this poses because the moment that spectators start to feel that what they are seeing is not a true contest, that is when spectators stop turning up and the whole thing turns to pieces,".

Police are to set up a special unit to track down illegal betting scams and attempted event-fixing at the Games.

The unit will be headed up by the Metropolitan Police and will work with the Serious Organised Crime Agency and Interpol to track suspicious gambling activity abroad.

The International Olympic Committee has also created a unit to monitor the global betting market for unusually large bets on particular events or competitors."

 Well that is interesting.

If you are like me, you have never been inside a testing laboratory intended to uncover prohibited substances 
If you are like Peter, the OP, you might have such knowledge.

All I know is what I see with my two eyes, one of which is clearer than the other ... 

Even then I don't know what I am looking at ... take today's racing at Townsville or Taree - I can not name the exact race for reasons of defamation, but it was when they straightened for home, and it was in the first 2 races at one of those venues.

When you see a horse run third, with its head at a 90 degree angle to the rest of its body, then that is because the horse is tending to "hang in" ... right? 

The winner was clear by 2 lengths at the post, and the second horse was a neck in front of our third-place "hang-in" pony.

Now I could have been watching with my crook eye, but I could have sworn the third placed horse took off like a scalded cat, once it got its head straight, in the shadows of the post. 

All that aside, I would like Peter to elaborate on what he meant by "especially when the price is right"

What has price got to do with a horse's chances of winning?

Seems we had this discussion on this forum earlier http://www.racehorsetalk.com.au/index.php/topic,10878.0.html

It seems Gambling Man got hauled over the coals for daring to assume that if a horse won at more than 20/1 then it should have been at a shorter price - the majority of punters were wrong!

Now we are listening to a statement by Peter Mair, who is indirectly stating something similar, as I see it ... that unless "the price is right" then the horse might not be fit enough to win ie ... "trained to the minute."

Such suggestions conjure up all sorts of illusions ... illusions like "horses don't always run on their merits"  (of course they do) ... and "horses never race if they have prohibited substances on board" ... (of course they don't) ... and there are no such things as boat races ... (tell 'em they're dreamin!)

Look - farbeit for me to try to tell anyone how to suck eggs ... but can I just advance a small theory I have here ... and that is that if every favourite won, then the racing industry would collapse in three weeks.

Stands to reason then, that if you want to prosper in punting, then you look elsewhere if the price is shorter than 3/1.
I would rather be on the 66% of non-favourites at value prices than the 33% of favourites at short odds.

Generally ...

Just a comment ... and not intended to ruffle anyone's feathers 

I have seen a lot of fur and feathers on this site, so I found out very quickly where the opinions are 

And as with my own, opinions are just that ... someone's perception. Sorry if we are getting a weeny bit off-topic   

Intersting thoughts - I would argue most punters would be battling to tip winners at a 33% strike rate.

Yes, Calgary - 33% winners would be hard to tip - but not too far off if you back every favourite.

Then again, which one do you pick when you have two horses paying $2.60 and $2.50 before the jump?

Or when you have joint favourites at $4.20? There is always going to be a grey area or two, so we can but generalise.

By the way - on reading my post, it could have been construed that I was taking a cheap shot at the OP - Peter Mair. Far from it - my intention was to highlight that all is not as well in the industry as one would hope from a punting point of view. I am unsure if owners and trainers are happy about a few things either - things out of their control. And the bookies - well they take the opposite side of our bets, so it is hard to have too much empathy with them here.

But yes - even the bookies can get a caning when a smokey is in commission. I was "bagman" for a country bookie at Bundaberg (a few years back further than I like to remember) ... and indeed some of the money that came out of the clouds on long-shots around the ring was definitely city money.

I don't think too much SP bookmaking goes on like it once did, but to hit the country bookies instead of at the track at which the neddy was running, was a dog act in my view.

Anyway - Peter wrote his post with an air of: "the hallmarks of material put together some time ago to be used as arresting filler for the all-on-leave festive season"

But regardless of the timing, or whether it was designed to hit the plasma at a time when there is little else worth sensationalising, the situation would not attract attention if this were simply "old news." My view is that - as the film clip intimated - the laboratories are always playing catch-up.

Why would they say that, and why do I find it so easy to believe it?

Things like "familiarity breeds complacence (contempt)" and " eternal vigilance is the price of integrity (freedom)" spring to mind.

I may be a tad paranoid, but sometimes a little paranoia is healthy where money is concerned, and where that money can be affected by so many variables in what is generally an industry noted for its colour.

Welcome Janice  agree with some of your views here.
Notably, backing value horses & that's it's a hard road backing shorties.
I think some punters always back the shorties as they are conditioned to do so. 

IMO trainers play the main role in form reversals, more so than jockeys. 

 

To be successful in racing is not about strike rate, it is not about what price horses are, to win in racing it is about knowing what prices horses should be, once you can "class" horses you improve your chances of winning immensely, horses who actually "Should" be favs would have a much better strike rate than the actual fav has, you must be flexible in your punting, don't always back what you think will win ,it doesn't matter who you are or how good you think you are most of your selections will get beaten!! Once you learn to accept your limitations then you can start looking at winning from a different perspective, horses are like any other Commodity, if you want to buy a Fridge or a TV or a Motor car  you shop around, no one would drive a Ford or a Holden if all cars were the same price would they??, the roads would be full of Lamborghini's /Ferrari's/Rolls Royce's etc. wouldn't they??
Backing horses is the same, you look for he horse with a Chance that is way over the odds, there are plenty in every day, luck in running is very important and decides a lot of races, ie. the 20/1 shot is actually more likely to get the luck than the fav because no one is watching it, he can do what he likes,
in short look for the horses that should be shorter than what they are(Most punters are egotistical and back what they think will win, very few actually can read and assess the form of the longer priced horses so they don't consider horses that do not have solid backing, I actually think sometimes they don't mine losing if the thing the majority are going down with them, I have even heard the tipsters on TVN and Sky say they won't back something until they see the money come for it?? in other words they want to take the BOTTOM of the market!!!! have you ever heard anything so Bloody stupid?? Why would you follow someone who had Zero confidence in their own opinion?????
My  Golden Rules of punting
1, Know you limitations(by that I mean don't think you can back every winner or even on as high as 33% winners because if you have to do that to win you have very little chance of finishing in front long term)
2, Price isn't really a barometer to a horses chances
3, Pick you battles, don't spread yourself too thin, stick with what you know

I agree with all of your post, Peter.

What you are saying is that common human decency needs to prevail, and when and where it does not, then the Stewards need to use the means at their disposal - without compromise - to clean up the situation.

But there is a line that must not be crossed, and I am not sure that you meant it the way it came out. I am talking about the "stable secrets" lines below.


Owners are entitled to the best price they can get, if they bet as well as race their charges for the prize money.

I don't think you mean that they should make it known to the industry generally that their horse just ran 62sec in a 1000 metre trial, or managed 35.8sec for a sectional 6oo metres. Or that for a horse that usually takes three runs to get fit, is being presented this time fully primed for a first-up strike. 

I mean getting the best price "should" be the preserve of the owners and trainers. Punters can only bet on revealed form. I remember friends of mine in Mackay in the early 1970's being members of the Jack Denham stable supporters. They paid heavily for the information, and you could not prise it out of them until just before the jump. Who could forget Purple Patch? I admired that horse, though I could never get him on his day! I can not recall getting a collect on him, though I backed him a few times!

These guys were big bettors, and I suppose, unusually loyal to their stable. We did get the info before the jump eventually, (sometimes) but not until the price was gone.

This shows you how long I have been out of the racing loop. Back in the day, we relied on information, and certainly did get some decent oil at times. But it was not cheap. And I remember paying $40 to get "information" on Wave King at Sandown from an urger!

He won at 7/4.
Next week he was tipped to us again - again at 7/4, and couldn't manage a place I don't think!

Cheap information is no information! But there are better ways than getting information ... and some may have cracked it.

I don't think stable information should be out in the public domain - as sad as that might sound for the small punter.

There is a reason it is called 'gambling' and if you want to succeed at it, you need an edge. Unfortunately, for some, getting that edge may involve less than savoury methodology. But if everything was known that could be known, then favourites would be at shorter prices, don't you think? And perhaps they would have greater strike rate than 33% +/- a few %?

I used to subscribe to Clif Carey's "Racing Review" as it had a lot of information in it that was not generally available in the public domain as such. I guess "The Sportsman" had most of it somewhere, but there was an avalanche of reading required before some of the information could be discovered. Carey had it summarised inside the back cover, and had Clockers and Stop Watch Specials to follow, and so on.

Getting a bit nostalgic now, so will leave it. Thanks for your OP and the resulting chat about these things.

I guess racing never leaves your blood - it's like a virus!