The reaction so far has been pretty predictable, with the powers-that-be doing a lot of hand wringing, and swearing to assist in rooting out all evil. The question is whether they can get past their real concern-- perception-- and to what should be their concern, which is to stop this crap. If they really were concerned about stopping this garbage, it could have been done long ago-- we are not talking about stuff that was flying under the radar here, since, for example, there was a "Supertrainer" panel at the DRF Expo almost a year ago, an Expo attended by Tim Smith and others in the "Industry".

The DRF response has been interesting. Jay Privman is both a friend and a horseplayer, and he has voiced his outrage to me privately about us all having to factor in "move-ups" when handicapping. His milkshake articles in the Sunday DRF are very good, and I expect that he will continue to be both on-point and all over the story as it unfolds. Matt Hegarty is a different story-- his lead paragraph, where he ties performance-enhancing drugs and rebate shops together as issues facing the industry, is classic Hegarty innuendo. He has an animus towards rebate shops (with the apparent exception of the one that was set up by a guy who I hear is a friend and source for him), which resulted in Matt and me butting heads last winter, the Form publishing my letter to the editor talking about it, and Hegarty sliming me by association in an article the following week. Among other things, he referred to our rebate venture as a "syndicate"-- I had to get into a shouting match with the DRF Editor, and made him pull out a dictionary to look it up, before they made him change it.

For the record-- the rebate outfit we are associated with is NOT one of the ones named in those indictments. Further, Hegarty and those he quotes in Sunday's DRF miss the points, which are

1-- people who are doing bad things can bet anywhere, and are MORE anonymous at the track than when they have to give info to open an account with an account wagering outfit. Account wagering sites also keep records, which is how they caught these guys.

2-- the major threat from these places concerns past posting, a problem that can be solved by shutting the pools before they load the horses, as I have said here before, and by transferring the wagering info to a seperate site that can't be gotten to. You don't need to do anything with rebate sites themselves to accomplish this.

3-- a huge amount of money is being bet by those who would not do so without rebates. So far the industry hasn't figured out that the answer is to cut out the middle man by giving rebates themselves, although there was a rumor going around a few months ago that Churchill made a very big offer for a half interest in RGS. And, of course, Magna made that ill-fated attempt to get into the rebare business in the same venture we are involved in, which is what got Hegarty throwing darts at me to begin with.



TGJB