Betting Good on Horse Racing

In former times in the U.S., purses were on the whole too small to come anywhere near supporting even the winners in horse racing.

In an effort to make it pay, the owners used to bet heavily on their horses when they looked good, and trained their horses most carefully for races on which they intended to bet.

The bets were taken by licensed bookmakers who paid odds that were agreed on at the time of the bet and could not be changed.

After one or two big bets on a horse, the bookmakers might drop its odds for the next bettor, thus performing a kind of arbitrate (and hedging their own risks).

John D. Hertz, the founder of Hertz Drive-Ur-Self Corp. and Yellow Cab, had a stable in the era of the big bet (his silks are yellow and black, like his cabs), and in his memoirs, he tells a story that suggests a lot about the way things used to be.

At Saratoga in 1927, Hertz bought a two-year-old in training, who became quite a horse. Named Raleigh Count, he won the Kentucky Derby in 1928, and was the best three-year-old that year.

Later, he sired the very great count Fleet.

One sunny September Saturday in 1928, Hertz and his friends bet enough on Reigh Count at Belmont Park to knock his odds on the bookmaker's blackboards down to less than even money.

This happened despite the fact that Harry Payne Whitney had walked into the betting ring and laid $50,000 to win on Victorian, his own horse in that race.

Reigh Count won and Hertz took home so much money that it disturbed him. He resolved never to bet big again, a resolution he says he kept in two races Reigh Count ran in England the following year (one of which he won).

Hertz and Whitney, of course, were real sportsmen, porting in the bet as well as in the racing of their horses. But not all stables were run by men like them, and with some owners trying to make a go of it by means of betting alone.

There was an incentive to try to improve the odds by controlling a horse's form - that is by holding him back for a race or two when he might have been ready to win.

Crooked gamblers were always trying to get at racing; some did, and gave racing a bad name. All these problems were diminished as the era of the big bet receded in the U.S., and stable owners began to concentrate on purses.

This brought respectability to the sport, and made it more attractive to businessmen, with some spectacular effects.