Yesterday we wrote that something happened Sunday and we were going to find out what. Twenty-four hours later, we still don’t know exactly what happened. But we know considerably more than we did yesterday. And apparently, we’re not the only ones looking anymore.
What started with horseplayers noticing a series of unusual results at Saratoga and Monmouth Park has now moved beyond social media. Racing authorities and integrity organizations are looking into at least some of what occurred, while additional information continues to surface about the horses, the wagering, and the people involved. That doesn’t mean anyone cheated. It doesn’t mean races were fixed. It doesn’t mean horses were illegally treated. It doesn’t mean every allegation currently circulating on X is true. It means there are legitimate questions.There were yesterday. There are considerably more today.
Horseplayers Saw It Early
One thing should be made clear before we go any further. We don’t know exactly when racing’s regulators first became aware of what happened Sunday or what specifically triggered their respective inquiries. We aren’t going to pretend we do. What we do know is horseplayers were on this almost immediately.
Dougie Salvatore was among those publicly connecting the dots Sunday, identifying the horses shipping from Fair Hill and questioning what we were watching. Other serious players started pulling past performances, examining workout patterns, looking at the wagering pools and comparing notes. We did the same. That led to our first story. We deliberately didn’t call anybody a cheater. We didn’t declare that races were fixed. We didn’t take anonymous texts and X posts and turn them into facts. We said something happened. We started looking.
What Started This
At Saratoga, Ernesto Ochoa sent out two winners. Classic Rock won the fourth race, a $35,000 maiden claimer. M Bs Melanie Cares later won an $85,000 claiming race. At Monmouth Park, Angel Quiroz won consecutive races with The Great Amira and Tepeyac. Four winners. Two trainers. Two racetracks. And all four showed recent published workouts at Fair Hill. That was the common denominator staring off the page. There were other things that attracted attention. The Great Amira won at 20-1 and paid $37.20. Tepeyac followed immediately afterward. The wagering surrounding some of the combinations began generating questions of its own. But unusual results happen every day in horse racing. Longshots win. Trainers get hot. Horses improve. People make strange bets. None of that proves anything. The question was whether all of these things happening together were coincidence or whether there was something underneath them worth examining. Now people with considerably more investigative authority than us are asking questions too.
The $12.80 Double
One of the most interesting pieces of this remains the wagering. The Great Amira paid $37.20 after winning the third race at Monmouth. Tepeyac paid $9.60 after winning the fourth. The $2 Daily Double connecting them paid $12.80. That number immediately attracted attention. It doesn’t prove the race was fixed. It doesn’t prove somebody knew something. Pari-mutuel pools can produce strange results, particularly depending upon pool size, betting concentration and late money. But when a 17-1 winner is followed by a horse paying $9.60 and the double comes back $12.80 for $2, serious horseplayers are going to look. They should. The proper question isn’t whether the payoff looks suspicious. The proper question is why it paid what it paid. That requires the actual pool data. Who bet what? When did the money enter the pool? Through which wagering platforms or hubs? How concentrated were the combinations? Were there cancellations? Were there unusually large wagers? Did the betting pattern develop gradually or appear late? Those answers exist. We want them.
Then Came Another Development
Pat Cummings added another layer Monday.
Cummings reported, citing what he described as a reliable U.K. source, that bookmakers there could potentially be facing millions in liability if two additional horses won Monday, following what happened Sunday. He reported that eight races were involved and that betting shops across London had apparently taken substantial action at approximately the same time. That is significant information coming from a highly knowledgeable racing and wagering source. It is also, at this point, information we have not independently verified. Both things can be true. We’re not going to turn somebody else’s source into our fact. We are going to try to find out whether it’s true. Because if substantial coordinated wagers were actually placed with bookmakers outside the United States on horses connected in some way to what we’re already examining, that becomes a very different piece of the puzzle.
Fair Hill
Fair Hill remains the most obvious common thread. That doesn’t make Fair Hill guilty of anything. It makes Fair Hill important. We want to know where these horses were physically stabled. Who had custody of them? Who supervised their training? Who observed and reported the published workouts? How does the workout reporting system at Fair Hill operate? Were all four horses actually working where and when the official records say they were? And perhaps most importantly, what relationships, if any, existed between the people handling these horses? Those are factual questions. They have factual answers. We’re looking for them.
My Own Reaction to M Bs Melanie Cares
There is another piece of this I didn’t include yesterday because I didn’t want my own wagering result influencing the initial story. I bet the race M Bs Melanie Cares won. She knocked me out of the Pick 5. That happens. I’ve lost more Pick 5s than I could ever count, and being wrong about a horse doesn’t make anything suspicious. But this one bothered me immediately. I thought I had the two horses most likely to win the race, and more importantly, I expected both to be considerably closer to the pace. Instead, both wound up well back and never really got involved. M Bs Melanie Cares won. Before I knew anything about Fair Hill, Ochoa, Quiroz, betting in England or anything being said on X, I had one immediate reaction watching that horse: Where did that race come from? That isn’t evidence. It isn’t an accusation. It is simply what I thought before I knew there was anything to investigate. Horse racing taught me a long time ago to remember those moments.
Saratoga Is Not Immune
There is a tendency in racing to believe certain things simply couldn’t happen at certain places. Saratoga. The Kentucky Derby. The biggest races. The biggest stages. History says otherwise. I’ve written extensively about the jockey race-fixing scandals of the 1970s. Those scandals involved jockeys holding horses and bettors attempting to capitalize on races whose outcomes they believed had been compromised. Saratoga was among the tracks touched by that era. Go further back and you find Arnold Rothstein—the Brain—perhaps the most notorious gambling fixer in American history, operating in a world where racing, bookmakers, gambling information and organized crime frequently intersected. Different era. Different sport. Different regulatory environment. Same lesson.
Don’t assume something couldn’t happen because of where it happened.
Saratoga isn’t immune because it’s Saratoga. Nothing in racing is immune because of the name over the grandstand.mAnd we don’t have to go back a century to understand that.mMaximum Security crossed the wire first in the 2019 Kentucky Derby before being disqualified for interference. The horse later won the inaugural Saudi Cup. Nobody watching those races knew what federal investigators would subsequently uncover regarding trainer Jason Servis. Servis eventually pleaded guilty in the federal racehorse-doping case. The horse at the center of two of the biggest races in the world had been sitting in a barn that would eventually become the center of a federal prosecution. That doesn’t tell us anything about what happened Sunday. It tells us something about assumptions. Sometimes the thing everybody sees isn’t the whole story. The lesson isn’t that every surprising performance is cheating. The lesson is that dismissing legitimate questions because the possible answer seems too outrageous isn’t investigation either.
Now Racing Is Looking
Since our original story, this has moved considerably beyond horseplayers talking among themselves. Horse Racing Nation reported Monday that the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit is investigating the circumstances surrounding the unusual results and wagering, while the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau is also involved. That is important. It also does not mean either organization has concluded wrongdoing occurred. An investigation is not a conviction. It isn’t even an accusation. It means enough questions exist that people responsible for answering them are looking. That’s exactly what should happen.
The Internet Will Get Ahead of the Facts
It already has. There are accusations flying around involving trainers, jockeys, owners, drugs, bookmakers, wagering syndicates, Gulfstream Park, Fair Hill and just about everything else imaginable. Some of it may eventually prove relevant. Some of it may turn out to be complete nonsense. We’re not interested in guessing which is which. If someone says a trainer cheated, show us the evidence. If someone says a jockey stiffed a horse, show us the evidence. If someone says millions were bet overseas, show us the wagering records. If someone says the American pools were manipulated, show us the pool data. If someone says these horses were being trained or handled by somebody other than who appears on the program, show us the records. That’s where this goes now.
Follow the Horses. Follow the Money.
There are really two investigations here. One concerns the horses. The other concerns the wagering. They may ultimately intersect. They may not. The horse side means reconstructing where these horses were, who had them, who trained them, who treated them, who clocked them and how they arrived at Saratoga and Monmouth. The wagering side means reconstructing the pools, the doubles, multi-race wagers, late money, offshore activity and the reports now coming from the U.K. And somewhere in between are the relationships connecting the people involved.
Maybe there’s an explanation for all of it. There very well could be. If there is, we’ll report it. If there isn’t, we’ll report that too.
HISA Has an Opportunity Here
HISA takes plenty of heat in this space, including from us. Picograms. Nanograms. Enforcement decisions. Budgets. And the recurring question from horsemen and horseplayers alike: Are we catching the real cheaters? History tells us the real cheaters are out there. Racing would be extraordinarily naïve to believe otherwise. To HISA’s credit, it responded quickly to what happened Sunday and has been appropriately transparent, at least to the extent an active investigation allows. We saw a similar response when confidential past performances were leaked earlier this year, another matter we have followed closely and one that remains important. Now comes the part that matters most.
Resolution.
How HISA ultimately handles these two matters—the leaked past performances and whatever Sunday’s events turn out to be—will go a long way toward defining its role and its leadership in this industry. Investigations matter. Transparency matters. But ultimately, answers matter. If nothing improper happened Sunday, tell the industry what happened and why. If something did, follow it wherever it leads. The same goes for the leaked past performances. HISA has an opportunity here, and so does Lisa Lazarus.
Leadership isn’t defined by whether problems occur on your watch. It’s defined by what you do when they land on your desk. Yesterday we said something happened Sunday and we were going to find out what. We’re still looking. So are others.
Stay tuned.
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