I love race track stories of deception. Thus, I was taken when Joe Drape of the NYT wrote of when Kendrick Carmouche's jockey father Sylvester was hit with a ten-year suspension for deceptively making it appear that he and his horse had run the full course at Delta Downs in Louisiana, rather than just hanging out at the top of stretch, shrouded by nightfall and thick fog, and start to head to the finish line as the others were just starting to get close, but not too close, to them. He cut the course. He and his horse won by 24 lengths and paid a whopping mutuel from the 23-1 odds. But not for long.
I was again smitten with a story I did remember reading about from 1977, when there was a famous "ringer" case at Belmont, the substitution of a much faster horse for a slower horse. The slower horse is the one the public thinks is running, the one whose past performances, if even interpreted by a novice handicapper, show the horse has absolutely no chance of winning
Thus, the odds on the tote board point to despair, but the true odds of running a decent race, even a winning race, are terrific since the faster horse is going to actually run against far slower animals. Get on board.
Well, maybe not. Ringer cases are extremely rare, and rely on the perpetrator to engineer it with as much secrecy as possible. Think D-Day. If word were to spread that there is a faster horse running in place of the slower horse, there are enough people who will bet significant sums of money and drive the odds down, making it far less of a betting coup if the faster horse does win the race. (And they usually do.)
I was reminded of the 1977 ringer case when I was reading the obituary for the defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, famous for taking on what could be called celebrity clients, like Patty Hearst and O.J. Simpson. But he also did grunt work, and in this case he represented the veterinarian Mark Gerard, the brains, or perpetrator of the ringer case.
It's a long time ago, but there is plenty to read if you can access the Internet and the NYT archives online.
Many wrote about the case. Sports Illustrated eventually did a cover story on it. The NYT covered it from start to finish, with the legendary sportswriter Red Smith eventually telling his readers that the faster horse, Cinzano, was then, in 1980, running over jump races in Virginia, and further reminded us that Cinzano was substituted in the 9th race at Belmont, a turf affair, on September 23, 1977 for a plodder named Lebon, who Smith told us was "unable the beat a fat man from Gimbels to Macy's.
The stores then were one block apart, with a typical north/south NYC block pretty much one twentieth of a mile, 88 yards, significantly shorter than a furlong, which is 220 yards, an eighth of a mile. That would be a very slow horse.
When you dive into the story you appreciate how much of a secret Dr. Gerard kept the substitution. The jockey and the trainer of record, Jack Morgan, were not implicated in the scam. Larry Adams, a journeyman jockey of the era was quoted as saying "I thought he was just a horse that woke up on the grass...Once he got to the hedge, he ran a great race."
He certainly did. He went off at 57-1 and won easily by four lengths, netting Dr. Gerard approximately a $77,000 betting profit. That is a betting coup.
In fact, the trainer Jack Morgan, was given the horse (Cinzano as Lebon) by Dr. Gerard to condition, and was entered in a dirt race on September 9th, finishing 11th in a 12 horse field. The betting on that race was suspicious because it was reported a mystery, attractive blonde placed a $10,000 bet on Lebon, driving the odds from 55-1 to 7-1.
The story went that she didn't know "Lebon" was again in play in the September 23rd race. She therefore had no bet on the race he did "win." A woman scorned is not a good thing, and the story went that she contacted a reporter who supposedly broke the story. The story has a lot of fathers.
Bettors crave information, no matter what they're betting on. And horse racing has plenty of publically available information through the Daily Racing Form and their past performances, a highly reliable read of a horse's history.
If non-public information comes a bettor's way, it is always savored. It is rolled around in the mind and assessed for relevance and usefullness.
I remember one year sitting in someone's box at Saratoga when there was a friend of the friend whose box it was who was either a clocker himself, or knew the clockers and was quietly dispensing the information that so-and-so in the upcoming race had an unpublished workout that was lights out.
There are instances of when a public address announcement is made that a certain horse doesn't show a certain workout in their past performances. Thus, the non-public omission is acknowledged, and becomes public. Case closed.
In this instance, there is no announcement for some reason. The non-public information stays non-public. Is knowing it through this source useful? Sure, but not very useful when you look up and see that the horse he's talking about is 9-5, or less; the horse is certainly going to go off as the favorite.
Some secret piece of information. Either the bettors that help make the odds by their sums already know about the workout, or it just plain doesn't matter; the horse has enough going for it without knowing about the work that favoritism is a given. All information is not created equal.
There was a time years ago when I was in the Belmont paddock, invited by a friend to be with the party he was with. Another member of the party had a horse running in the race. The horse was trained by Colum O'Brien, a trainer of such poor numbers that their winning percentage could only have a 1 in it if you did the division and took the answer out to at least three decimal places; .001. That's a trainer who doesn't win races.
But everyone was polite and wished the owner well. I even put a $2 win bet on it in case there was a miracle, and the horse did win. It would be nice to be a winner with the other sorry optimists.
As the horses are being lead around there is someone called the Paddock Judge who looks at and examines each horse and makes sure they're wearing, or not wearing, the equipment the trainer said they'd be wearing, or not wearing. This is generally blinkers and front wraps.
Trainers will try different combinations of equipment, generally blinkers on, or blinkers off. The horse's aggressive running can be better controlled by the use, or non-use of blinkers. Or so it is believed. The only thing certain in horse racing is that there is no certainty. Accepting that will keep you in the game long enough to need bifocals to read the past performances and keep you going back over the years for stronger prescriptions. I just did.
Use or non-use of blinkers is public knowledge. It is noted in the programs and the past performances. The Paddock Judge makes sure the actual lines up with the intended. In the case of Colum O'Brien's horse, there was immediate evidence as to why he may not be a very successful trainer. (He's pretty much disappeared these days.) A public address announcement asked for Colum to please report to the paddock judge.
Apparently, Colum didn't inform the entry people that so-and-so was now going to race with, or without blinkers. There was an equipment change which should line up with the information presented in the program.
I seized on now knowing what was now non-public information. So-and-so had an equipment change that didn't show in the program, and wasn't being publically announced. Was it going to make a difference?
One of the people in the party, Bobby G., almost yelled at me when I told him I bet on the horse out of politeness. "That horse doesn't have four legs!" (He did this outside of earshot of the owner.)
This particular horse had the look of Lebon's past performance. He seemed incapable of outrunning a fat man sprinting between Gimbels and Macy's on a hot day, even if it was downhill, which it isn't.
No matter. I put an extra $2 to win on the horse just in case the equipment change was the charm he needed to run like a race horse rather than a plough horse.
Did the change help him?
Absolutely not.
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