Most UK licensed bookmakers offer odds on horse racing in the USA and even further afield. Those meetings will never replace the love that the British public has for the Cheltenham Festival, Aintree, Ascot and the like, but if you know what you’re looking at there are clearly opportunities – how can the bookies accurately predict hundreds of races from around the world every day?
On Sunday, they were the subject of a US racing coup that estimates suggest copped at least £800,000 in winnings on a very low-key day of action. And it was the ‘Fair Hill five’, a phrase that will live long in the memory of any punters that got involved, that did the damage.
Who Are the Fair Hill Five?
Fair Hill Training Centre (Credit: Alexbrown, Wikipedia.org)
Fair Hill is a thoroughbred racing training facility in Fair Hill, Maryland. It’s a venue that has produced countless big winners over the years, including Kentucky Derby champions like Barbaro and Animal Kingdom plus victors in the Breeders’ Cup Turf and the Arlington Million.
But it’s not a huge facility, so it’s very rare for them to have five runners on the same day – let alone four of them winning races within hours of one another. On Sunday, the quintet took to the track for races at Saratoga Park and Monmouth Park – each priced at 12/1 or longer, having all experienced long lay-offs recently.
But there must have been something in the Fair Hill water, as four of the five went on to win their respective races… with a surprisingly sizable liability falling in the lap of bookmakers on this side of the Atlantic. According to Pat Cummings, the executive director of the National Thoroughbred Alliance, bookies were hit for a sum of between £600,000 and £800,000 on these five races alone.
Speaking on the Nick Luck Daily podcast, Cummings revealed:
Our understanding is this was executed physically in betting shops in England. The degree of sophistication that is required to go into shops and bet on American racing; I’m told it was more than ten shops that may have been hit. A source of mine was suggesting it was £600,000-£800,000 of liability.
Cummings’ view was backed up by Paddy Power spokesman Paul Binfield, who admitted that the coup had ‘cost us a few quid.’
We saw some of the business in our UK retail estate and were alive to it in real time. It was a fairly remarkable attempted gamble; the likes of which we’ve never really seen before.
American Adventure
Monmouth Park Racetrack (Credit: Calstanhope, Wikipedia.org)
The plot got underway with 16/1 chance The Great Amira winning at Monmouth Park by some nine lengths, before Tepeyac (SP of 4/1, traded much longer) doubled up in the very next race for trainer Angel Quiroz. Meanwhile over at Saratoga, Ernesto Ochoa was enjoying a double of his own, with Classic Rock and M Bs Melanie Cares both prevailing in their races.
Those four underdog victories hit the bookmakers hard, and it might have been even worse as several of those in on the coup backed two more Fair Hill horses on Monday – alas, both Threedots Andadash and Bravo Rough were withdrawn as non-runners. A great day for punters then that perhaps had a direct line into the Fair Hill facility and its trainers. However, the story doesn’t end there…
Authorities are now investigating the races in question after suspicious betting patterns were reported by bookmakers in both the UK and the USA. The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) will now investigate the situation, with The Great Amira, Tepeyac, Classic Rock, M Bs Melanie Cares and the fifth Fair Hill runner, Scootaloo, all subject to additional testing. Their statement reads,
HISA is aware of information circulating on social media and concerns raised directly to HISA personnel regarding events at multiple races on August 9 and is actively investigating those concerns.
The CEO of HISA, Lisa Lazarus, revealed that this was the first time in history that her organisation had been contacted directly by UK bookmakers, after betting above and beyond the expected levels for Sunday racing in America was recorded.
The Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit subjected all four of the winners to testing for banned substances post-race. When quizzed on the remarkable turn of events, Angel Quiroz commented:
It’s very simple. I took my horses and ran them at Monmouth Park and won the races, and I took one horse to Saratoga and she ran fourth. Everybody is shocked. I don’t see what the big deal is or what the problem is. I’m supposed to run all the time and not try to win the race?