The extent of sports "fixing"

Quote: Ferocious Aardvark "A horse is not a machine. It has good days and bad days like you and me. One difference is they can't, in the main, talk and so can't tell anyone how well or fit or lethargic or whatever they are feeling on the day.

Next, every horse in training has targets. They are trained to reach a peak at the time those targets come up. If a horse is aimed at a race in a few months time, it is unlikely to run as well now as it will do then.

But then again, depending on how the horse runs in its earlier races, those targets may very well, and very often do, change. Also, sometimes owners get the horses put in to races which the trainer wouldn't choose.

Then on the day we have the going. A horse may be a mudlark, or a strictly top of the ground horse, and run like two different animals in different goings.

The there is race day itself. This can throw up another whole bunch of unpredictable variables. Just for example, sometimes a horse can get itself pretty wound up and stressed in the preliminaries, and have worked off half its energy before the race even starts. And then again, it may get a poor start, maybe stumbling out of the stalls, or getting a slow break. In a short race it may be impossible to recover. And again, the race itself. Your jockey might be up against 9say) 15 other pro jockeys, all wanting prize money, and all literally jockeying for position. You won't get many favours. Your horse could be very unlucky in running, it may end up bumped, or stuck behind a wall of horses, or just generally get a bad run.

And when it gets to the sharp end of the race, one day, your horse may sprout wings and go away from the field, on another day, it might hit the front but start treading water, and get beat.

These are just some of the reasons why horseracing is such an unpredictable sport, ad that's even before you start putting obstacles in the way that additionally they have to jump over.

Then again, you may have set your stall out aimed at (say) a particular handicap race at Doncaster, but it is at least likely that at least one or two, and maybe many more, other trainers have also been doing exactly the same thing. Your horse may run its best race, but so may several others.

There are very many ways for people to deliberately ensure that a horse doesn't run its best (I managed to dig out a link to a very interesting old rlGrauniad articlerl which offers a fascinating insight and is a good read) but while I'm sure a lot of this has always and always will go on, the thing is, it may be easier to guarantee that a horse won't win, but it's not easy to guarantee that it will, and that's where the real money is to be made.

Racing is not fundamentally corrupt, punters in general know the sort of things that go on but if they thought it was all fundamentally corrupt then they would walk away. They don't. The bookmakers also have an ever-better technological handle on unusual betting patterns, and ultimately not many of them end up in the poorhouse. Add to that the obvious self-interest of the Jockey Club in being very keen on detecting sharp practices and I'd say overall racing remains a very good and entertaining betting proposition. In the UK at least.'"

good post, i follow racing alot and even had a share in one not long ago.

notice alot that horses get punted around 5-10mins before the off giving the bookies less time to react and not letting the cat out of the bag i.e well handicapped, race fit from gallops or been going very well at home..they then go on and win! but horses are not machines and nothing is a dead cert