Delta is a ¾ mile bull ring oval where strange things happen in the daylight sun. Even stranger things happen when there is no sun and the fog rolls in, as apparently it does on January 11th, in time for the 11th race, with 9 horses being lead into the starting gate. It is 10:50 P.M. because Delta is running under the lights.
Sylvester is scheduled to ride Landing Officer, a five-year-old $2,500 claimer in fittingly, a $2,500 Claiming race for 4-year-olds and up who are non-winners of races since July 15th 1989. I have no idea what Landing Officer's past performances look like, but they can't be too encouraging since the horse goes off at a robust 23-1.
Joe Drape of the NYT the other day wrote of the professional progress of the journeyman jockey Kendrick Carmouche. As part of Kendrick's bio it can't help but be mentioned that he is the son of another journeyman jockey Sylvester Carmouche, who on the fateful day in January made a decision to leave the starting gate with everyone else, but instead linger at the top of the stretch and wait for the appropriate time to begin to run as the field eventually started to approach the final turn.
This is known as cutting the course, and if pulled off, should guarantee Landing Officer's victory and boxcar win and exacta payoff. Someone is going to score big, because when Sylvester decided to start his idling horse's engine, he finishes first with a staggering 24 length lead, and nearly ties the track record. Never mind that final time for the mile race is 1:441/5; they don't go fast when it's a 6f track and the horses are $2,500 claimers.
How does this happen? Well, the fog is so thick that the chart writer and the stewards can't see the race. Or they can't see it well enough to create an ordinary chart that tells us each horses' running position at each pole, and how far they are ahead of the horse behind them. All you see on the chart are dashes — for each horse. at each point of call throughout, with an explanation: "Due to a dense fog covering Delta Downs the calls for the eleventh race were not available."
The great folks at the Keeneland racing library were able to secure a copy of the chart and forward it to me. I'm not all that familiar with minor league tracks, but it is obvious each track can be different. In Delta's case, the payouts are quoted in terms of a $3 bet, rather than a $2, or $1 bet. This is unusual, but understandable when a track needs to goose the handle somehow.
So, do Sylvester's efforts on a 23-1 pull off a betting coup for someone with the track paying out on his finishing first? Not so fast.
Another jockey in the race approaches the stewards and tells them that Landing Officer didn't run the whole race. He cheated. It takes 15 minutes, nearly 15 minutes less that the stewards' review of Maximum Security's Derby disqualification in 2019 to somehow determine that only 8 of the 9 horses entered the clubhouse turn, but all 9 finished. Uh-oh.
Sylvester is in a world of trouble, and eventually is suspended by the Louisiana Racing Commission for 10 years, a hefty penalty. He fully admitted his deed, and paid the price.
But when did Sylvester hatch the plan? On impulse, when it became obvious to him that the fog was going to be a pea soup curtain of moisture that even lights couldn't penetrate? Hard to plan ahead much with weather.
And did he have an accomplice who suggested to him that there was money to be made if he did such and such? A co-conspirator? Surely someone got down with some hefty $100 bets on Landing Officer in hopes that a successful coup would produce many multiple payouts of $48 or so for a $2 bet. More of course for a $3 bet. And if the exacta is wheeled with Landing Officer on top, even more money can be had.
As it turned out, on the DQ, Something Strong is declared the winner, paying $20.80 for $3 to win, and producing a $177 $3 exacta with Hit the Hammer. There is always money to be made at the track. It just varies greatly who gets to make it, and how.
And those ever-helpful folks at the Keeneland Racing Library seemed to have read my mind when in a follow up I asked to see if they could produce the 10th race chart. They seemed to know that my thinking might be headed in the direction of, "well, what was it like before the 11th race,"
Producing the 10th race chart answered the question. A complete set of dashes, just like the 11th race. No visibility during the race. Without any further prompting, they told me that from the 3rd! race on, there was so much fog that none of the prior races could be viewed well enough to create a chart. In other words, it was London almost all night.
Thus, there were hours to hatch a plan to get to choose the right race to pull the stunt where they didn't have to move the starting gate and have the chance to see you double parked at the quarter pole, waiting for the rest of the field to reach you. Opportunity is presenting itself.
Knowing how the mind works, you have to wonder if Sylvester Carmouche's short circuit plan was the first and only short circuit ever perpetuated at Delta Downs, or anywhere for that matter. It's too diabolically delicious not to have been tried before, probably with success if the right people keep their mouth shut.
Somewhere on the Web I saw that someone has listed the Delta Downs race as the 7th best attempt at racing/betting fraud ever perpetuated. I'm going to have to dive into that and see if the No.1 was the Drexel University frat boys who nearly walked away with the entire Pick-6 Breeders' Cup pool in 2002, only to be undone by the extraordinary price of a long shot Valponi winning the race, leaving them holding the only winning ticket, as well as holding all the consolation tickets. Uh-oh.
Their deed was accomplished by internally manipulating the computer's reading of the results of the betting legs in the Six-6 sequence. It was undone by someone at NYRA alerting the mutuel room at Arlington Park that there was a serious betting anomaly to the Pick-6 betting. Uh-oh.
If the scams can be ranked, think of the ones no one but a select few know about that we're never going to hear about. It's diabolically delicious. It's horse racing. And we love it, warts and all.
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