Race-fixing allegations are an inevitable outcome of the arrival of online betting exchanges, writes Brian O'Connor.
Anyone who has ever placed a bet, even a tiny tickle each way on the Grand National, knows the giddy thrill that comes from easy money and the equisite sound of the grumbling bookie handing it over.
It's pretty addictive, so much so that the best thing that can happen to most of us is that our very first bet loses. But even those whose sad fate was to win first time out realise deep down that that bookmaker's whine is just a sales gimmick. It's a little embellishment on those rare occasions when we get on top, something to make us feel even better, and a sure way to get us back for the next race.
After all the bookie always wins.
Or rather that used to be the case. In the midst of the screaming headlines and shouts of indignation that accompanied Wednesday morning's arrest of the champion Kieren Fallon and 15 others, there was nobody roaring harder than the bookies. And there was nothing gimmicky about the raucous screeching either.
Their fury wasn't directed at the three jockeys that were picked up. After all, allegations that races are stitiched, and that bandy legged little men are fond of money, are as old as The Curragh. In fact punters quite like the idea. The scent of roguery gives the old game its sense of excitement and it means there is always something better to blame than our own crap judgement. No what the bookies are cribbing about is what this week's brouhaha is really ultimately all about, the evolution of the betting exchanges.
Those of you who are computer illiterate might switch off when the internet is mentioned but the concept of the betting exchange is so simple that it spells potential disaster for the Paddy Power's and Ladbrokes of this world. In short, it cuts them out: no more middle man. Why settle for prices they want to give you when you can scour the world for a more suitable bet? All you need is a computer. Get on to the site you want, Betfair or Betdaq or whatever, and click that mouse towards betting independence. A credit card will allow you deposit the amount you want with the firm and that is your bank. You can then bet with the thousands of people like you or, crucially, be the bookmaker and take bets on whatever you believe might lose. Regular users swear by it.
"It's so simple. It only takes seconds and 90 times out of a hundred, you will get better odds than you would in the betting shop," one betfair customer said yesterday. A laptop computer is now as crucial a piece of equipment to racecoruse bookmakers a good stick of chalk used to be. Where racecourse talk is usually cheaper than air, the exchanges provide hard, cold evidence of what's fancied and what's not.
The rub of course comes in precisely that egalitarianism. Anyone can use the exchanges, including those within the game who know quite a lot about what might have been catching pigeons up the gallops. That's relatively harmless. But what isn't is the same insiders who know that a beastie couldn't catch a cold on a certain day, never mind a pigeon, and bet accordingly.
"In England, there is regional racing with races worth only £1,500 and there are hundreds of thousands of pounds being bet on them on the exchanges. It's asking for trouble," said one Irish racing insider after Wednesday's arrests.
Sure enough information supplied by the Betfair exchange is a crucial part of the evidence currently being organised by the City Of London police, the UK's specialist fraud force. Although regulations for the exchanges are being included in the Gambling Bill which is set to come into law next year, the exchanges already have a Memorandum of Understanding with the Jockey Club which means any suspicious patterns are reported.
Betfair have wasted no time saying that this week proves that system works. Predictably the bookies don't agree.
"Akin to a householder leaving his doors and windows wide open and then claiming credit for reporting a burglary," sniffed the bookmakers association. "The reality is that the ability to lay horses to lose offers a far easier opportunity to the criminal than attempting to arrange for a certain horse to win."
That last point is undoubtedly correct but while betting exchanges have thrown the betting landscape wide open, to blame them outright for racing's latest visit to the spotlight is surely wide of the mark. There is a long tradition of attempting to fix race results without recourse to the smoking laptop.
Ever since kings of England decamped to Newmarket for the summer, or north Cork farmers galloped their horses from steeple to steeple, jockeys have hauled at horses mouths in the pursuit of money. Extensive camera work on modern racetracks may have stopped some of the more blatant stuff but horses still miss breaks, find interference and hit their stride just too late. And if that doesn't work there is still the occasional tabloid-friendly story about doped horses and syringe wielding villains.
The automatic media reaction to Wednesday's arrests was to ask if something similar has been going on in this country. But while Ireland's horse-tanglers are no doubt as greedy as anywhere else in the world, it's more traditional stuff that makes Irish headlines.
The last betting coup to stir the media's fancy here was just before the Galway festival, a coincidence that presumably had nothing to do with racing's most lucrative week of the year and everything to do with the bookmaking firms wanting to get their press releases just right.
But in the case of Bocaccio supposedly costing the bookies €2 million by winning at Leopardstown in July, it was a good old-fashioned story of some hardy north Kerrymen waiting outside betting shops throughout the country and at a set time nipping in with their cash in hand. On the back of this week's lurid headlines about audit trails and computer records, it's a story that almost verges on the twee.
Nevertheless the racing authorities in Ireland are preparing to update their rules on betting and tightening up the policing of the industry, including the exchanges.
"The difference between here and England is size. If there is some malpractice going on in Ireland it generally does surface, if not on the day, then later. It's usually someone who has been stung and comes to us giving out what we're going to do about it," says the Turf Club chief executive Denis Egan.
"We get the occasional instance of a non-trier here but there is no evidence at all of something like what is happening in England. The turnover on the exchanges is certainly going to get much higher than it is at present and it will have to be properly policed. I would envisage new rules coming into play here in November but before that we are going to implement a memorandum of understanding with the exchanges," he adds.
The police in England, and the Jockey Club, have been down this road before and made a complete mess of it.
It's only six years since another series of dawn raids resulted in three jump jockeys, Jamie Osborne, Dean Gallagher and Leighton Aspell, being arrested and briefly having their licenses taken away. Over a year and a half of investigative work resulted in precisely nothing. In 1999, Ray Cochrane and Graham Bradley were arrested and more investigations resulted in the same. The result is that this week's arrests were received with a weary resignation rather than genuine shock within the game.
It's not hard not to see why either. Only the blind or the very stupid will claim that a sport like racing, and an industry like gambling, can ever be whiter than white. It's the nature of both that there will always be people looking for an edge. In fact that's the key for many, trying to get inside, to be in the know.
After all it's easy money if you win, and we know how addictive that can be.