I cant say I disagreed with anything you say in the piece.

The letter:


Rebates and milkshakes a poor combination

Over the last few years, racing has faced some problems. Not real ones, mind you - "problems of perception," as some put it. Good thing, too - real problems require real solutions, while "problems of perception" require only solutions of perception. Now, shockingly, we find ourselves with a scandal - just the thing that industry leaders and racetrack operators wanted to avoid.

The main "problem of perception" involves drugs. Many horsemen and serious handicappers using speed figures have become convinced that certain trainers are regularly moving horses up in dramatic fashion, getting improvements way beyond those that can be obtained by good horsemanship. In fact, last year's DRF Expo featured a panel on the "supertrainers." But we must all have been wrong, because other than a few token gestures concerning one drug (milkshakes), the industry has taken no steps to protect the betting public, and the honest horsemen.

So here it is, guys: a four-point plan that will dramatically help with this problem. It will cost a few bucks, but it's worth it.

1. Build a 24-hour detention barn at every track. Horsemen will scream initially, but they will get used to it. And you will eliminate raceday drugs such as milkshakes.

2. Freeze the samples of the winner and a random horse from each race at every track. From what I've been told it's not that expensive, and it is a very powerful deterrent. The drug guys are ahead of the testers, but not ahead of where the testers will be in five years.

3. Make the trainer name with every entry a veterinarian of record who will be subject to penalties, and list him in the program, which will make it easier for all of us to track what's going on.

4. Make the trainer and vet fill out and sign off on a form with every entry, listing everything that has been put into the horse over the last seven days.

Unfortunately, the recent scandal has created an atmosphere of hysteria in which drugs have become linked with rebates, due in part to the unfortunate initial coverage in the Racing Form, which, in the first paragraph of the Jan. 16 article "Glare on sport's dark corners," linked drugs and rebates equally as the two "issues" facing the industry. The Form continued to fuel the fire in subsequent articles, while not showing how racing's interests were adversely affected by rebate houses, pausing just long enough to let one particular rebater - Racing and Gaming Services - have two paragraphs for a lawyer's statement distancing itself from the scandal. Not surprisingly, that was the only major site not cut off by the New York Racing Association and others a couple of days later.

Look, if someone is doing something illegal, they have to be really dumb to bet through a rebater. This scandal has shown why: Account wagering companies require names and keep records, while you can go to any racetrack, simulcast site, or OTB in the land and bet in total anonymity. And other than the drug aspect, which really is important, the alleged crimes involved in the scandal are technical violations of far greater interest and consequence to the IRS and those who sell newspapers than to those of us in racing.

Full disclosure: My company has a business relationship with a rebate outfit, not one of the ones named in the indictment. But what racetracks need to do is cut out the middlemen and either lower the insanely high takeout or give rebates themselves. Failing that, anyone who thinks the enormous amount of handle generated because of rebates is simply going to be put through the windows at full price hasn't been paying attention. It will either go to non-parimutuel sites that offer rebates or disappear entirely.

Another "problem of perception" is that many of us believe that the pools are being tampered with after betting closes, and it's easy to solve, independent of rebates - simply close the betting before the first horse is loaded and transfer the data to another computer, which is then isolated.

But hey, if another scandal does explode, it will just be a problem of perception.

Jerry Brown, New York City
President, Thoro-Graph Inc.