BIG BETTING COUPS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 109, 11 May 1933, Page 4

BIG BETTING COUPS

SOME SENSATIONAL WINS. “RACING NEVER CLEANER THAN TO-DAY.” I have just read a novel which is a tall yarn about betting coups effected by a foreign syndicate on English racecourse (writes Captain Eric Rickman in the Daily Mail). A highly imaginative author permits them to win £750,000 over a Lincolnshire Handicap and £BO,OOO over the Royal Hunt Cup. On another occasion they back their horse to win a million and a-quar-ter. but lose their money. These figures, of course, are the limit of literary license. They may be effective and excusable exaggerations for the author’s purpose, but much barm has been done to racing in recent years by the false ideas, too generally held, about the sums won and lost by betting and the profits and financial resources of the bookmakers. Commissions of inquiry have found it difficult to get at the truth, and some politicians have refused to believe it when it has been presented to them. Fortunes Once Staked. In the days when heavy gambling was fashionable fortunes were staked on the result of a horse-race, and throughout the nineteenth century the state of the betting market frequently enabled anyone with the necessary credit to back a horse to any limit that his own confidence or financial resources might finally impose. Those were good times for clever bookmakers. Many left large fortunes when they died, which no doubt accounts in part for the lingering belief that bookmaking is still an exceedingly lucrative calling. But conditions have changed greatly. By betting so as to keep a slight shade of odds on his own favour the course bookmaker may earn a fair living consistent with the capital he employs, and those who provide facilities for office betting on credit by telegram and telephone succeed or fail in much the same way as others who give their energy and money to commercial ventures. Possibly more people take an interest in racing now than ever before, but the big bettor is extinct and the huge stable “coup,” successful or unsuccessful, a thing of the pe/4. I may be asked for my definition of a “big” bettor and a “huge” coup. Comparisons, implied or definite, will suffice for an answer. Risking £lOOO. I know only two regular racegoers who are prepared on occasions to have as much as £lOOO on a horse with which they are in no way connected, and it is only at the big meetings and when their fancy is at a short price that they are likely to be accommodated by the very small group of bookmakers who are strong enough to bet with them. One man is a professional of long standing and the other a wealthy amateur who has been at it for several years without apparently coming to much harm. There are a few owners and one or two trainers who risk sometimes as much as £lOOO on a horse of their own, but commissions of this size are rare nowadays and arc usually forthcoming only when the odds are short and a large outlay is necessary to win a satisfactory sum. There are many flat-race meetings where it would be a practical impossibility to execute a commission of £lOOO at a fair price, even on a favourite, and at some of these places £lOO, divided between several bookmakers, would be sufficient to bring an original 10 to 1 chance to half those odds.

Perhaps the largest successful coup within living memory was accomplished when Winkfield’s Pride won the Cambridgeshire of 1806. The commission

was entrusted to one of the leading operators of tho day, and he backed the horse to win about £lOO,OOO. Half of this was for tho horse’s connections and the other half for himself. A mansion facing Wimbledon Common, London, bears a name which marks its association with this success. The commissioner built it out of his winnings.

Two Big Wins.

Two of tho largest individual wins since the war was made by tho late “Jimmy” White. He backed Bracket, the Cesarewitch winner of 1920, to win £70,000, though the filly did not belong to him. Others more closely associated with her also won substantial sums on that occasion. The success of White’s horse Granely in the Lilcolnshire Handicap of 1922 brought him £BO,OOO, rather against his final expectations. Something went wrong with the horse a few days before the race, and though White wanted to get out of some, at least, of his bets, the market moved too quickly for him. Granely went out at 20 to 1, and. he had to stand the lot. During the post-war period, when the betting market was supported by the false wealth of the time, some spectacular betting raids were made with French horses. The connections of Palais Royal 11. are reputed to have won £40,000 by that horse’s Cambridgeshire victory, and those associated with the mighty Epinard probably stood to win quite as much as that when he was narrowly beaten by Verdict in the Cambridgeshire of 1923. A professional backer won £30,000 for himself over Verdict.

These were exceptional sums even in those hectic days, and racing will never see their like again in our time. Very few of the best-known owners bet heavily, and as it is now customary for a trainer to receive from an owner 10 per cent, of all prizes won for him, trainers as a class give less thought to betting than did their predecessors. Unless heavy betting is a widespread practice big individual coups are impossible. The bookmaker who would lay £3OOO to £lOOO, as a few might at Ascot, would be likely to refuse a bet of £3OO to £lOO at some other meetings where he was only taking “fivers’* and “tenners” about the other horses. The bookmaker is not there to gamble, though he is compelled frequently to do so to some extent. He will only bet “big** as a rule when a number of horses are being heavily backed.

Cleaner Racing.

Circumstances combine to beat the man who gambles very large sums on horses, however good a judge of the game he may be. Sooner or later he finds that whenever he wants a bet he has to take a short price, and one that is not consistent with the risk he is taking. Moreover, human nature has its limitations, and when huge sums are at stake the plunger unwittingly creates temptation. Racing has never been cleaner than it is to-day, and no ore who has its best interests at heart would wish for tho return of 4 ‘big” betting as our fathers and grandfathers knew it.