Big betting coup grabs headlines
· Citizen
A racing betting coup made front pages of mainstream international news media last week – even in the UK’s Guardian, a publication that doesn’t provide routine coverage of the sport of kings.
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The coup was dubbed the “Fair Hill Five” because it was thought five horses from one US training centre had been “set up” to win, out of the blue, at longish odds.
In the end, four of the five won, but it is now suspected that as many as eight out-of-form and rested runners were part of the original plan.
As the Guardian pointed out, a coup is not in itself illegal, but rather “…a coordinated attempt to outsmart the bookmakers. It can be entirely legitimate and nothing so far in [this] case proves doping, race-fixing or any other misconduct.”
However, the US Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (Hisa) and the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau (TRPB) have launched investigations and the UK’s Racing Post has alerted integrity watchdogs to hefty bookmaker losses in that part of the world.
It all started when The Great Amira, a 17-1 longshot who’d finished last in her previous two starts, won by 9.50 lengths at Monmouth Park racetrack in New Jersey.
That mare’s little-known trainer Angel Quiroz then won the very next race with Tepeyac, who went off at about 4-1 after late support.
“…the meagre Daily Double payout for picking both outsiders suggested the exact combination had been unusually well backed”, drily noted one report.
On the same day, there were two longshot winners at Saratoga racecourse in New York: Classic Rock at 8-1 (by 9.00 lengths) and M BS Melanie Cares at 12-1 – both entered by owner-trainer Ernesto Ochoa, who seemingly has links to Quiroz.
Also at Saratoga, Quiroz-trained Scootaloo had a bad start and finished fourth.
It wasn’t long before sharp-eyed racegoers noticed that all five horses had been prepared at Fair Hill in the nearby state of Maryland. Quiroz and Ochoa had registered just two wins each in 2026 up till then.
Conspiracy detectives quickly spotted a sixth Sunday horse, Quiroz’s Winston Wolf, who finished runner-up at Virginia’s Colonial Downs.
All six were coming off lay-offs of between four and nine months and had little in the way of prior form.
The four winners had routine blood samples taken and lab test results were still pending a week later.
With the Fair Hill Five making headlines by Monday, two further stable-linked horses, Threedots Andadash and Bravo Rough, were scratched from that day’s racing, sparking speculation they had also been part of the coup.
Those withdrawals did not cancel multiple bets they’d been part of but did reduce their payouts.
On Tuesday, British bookmakers reported a £800,000 ($1.1-million or R17.8-million) coup had been pulled off through in-person and ticket machine wagers on the Fair Hill runners at more than 12 London betting outlets.
Clearly, the UK had been targeted for its bookmaker fixed-odds betting – which ensured better payouts than under the US’s totalisator (or parimutuel) system.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the use of wager packages of singles, doubles, trebles and quadruples allowed parts of permutations to survive losing selections.
Quiroz and Ochoa have denied wrongdoing and say they simply trained their horses well.
In addition to possible positive dope tests, other potential charges against them would involve hidden ownership and “race manipulation”.
The South African racing industry aims to increase its international profile and participation and is hopefully well aware of who and what it is inviting in.