Sadly, Sehgal is no psychic. Rather, he is in the loop about one simple fact: Thai horse racing is rigged. The industry, which is one of the biggest in Asia, stands alone in terms of corruption. Many powerful horse owners regularly collude to pick the winners and losers, making millions of dollars in gambling profits at the expense of average fans. “It’s criminal,” says Sehgal, an Indian-Thai who is a prominent member of the Royal Bangkok’s general committee. “They all know each other, so they can call each other and see which horses are trying.”
Corruption has long been part of Thailand’s century-old racing industry, but racing officials now say they have a more serious problem than a few owners lining their pockets. Betting revenues as well as attendance at Thailand’s seven racetracks have plummeted nearly 50 percent in five years, as disillusioned punters stay home or place their bets on other sports like English football. “There’s always been collusion, but it’s completely out of control,” complains horse owner Akalit Guna-Tilaka, whose grandfather cofounded the Royal Bangkok in the early 1900s. “This type of thing never happens [at racetracks] anywhere else in the world.” The shady backroom deals are striking at the heart of a multimillion-dollar industry that, including racetracks, stud farms and smaller breeding centers, employs 300,000 people. Quite simply, the entire system is in danger of financial collapse.
The racetrack racket is fairly straightforward. As bets trickle in before each race, the odds on each horse rise and fall depending on how much is bet. The odds and amounts bet are displayed on a giant screen, called a tote board, which changes by the second. Moments before a race begins, the odds on most of the 15 horses will shoot through the roof, while the odds on three or four others will plummet. That is the telltale sign that owners, snug in their private VIP boxes, have placed huge wagers on certain horses, knowing in advance that the other jockeys have been instructed to lose, according to race officials who explained the scam to NEWSWEEK. Some knowledgeable punters follow the owners’ lead, but the average fan in the stands is taken to the cleaners on a horse destined to lose.
In one race viewed by a NEWSWEEK correspondent, a jockey coming out of the gate immediately zigzagged his horse across the track, rather than run straight, and fell into last place before the first turn. In the next race, two horses were running neck and neck in the home stretch, far ahead of the pack. While one jockey was whipping his horse to go faster, the other was off his saddle, pulling on the reins to slow down. “In any other country, horse racing is a sport, but here it’s organized crime,” fumes Australian Chris White, an experienced horse trainer hired by the Royal Bangkok to help clean up its races who recently quit in frustration. “And the little guy downstairs is throwing his money away.”
In recent years authorities have allowed Thai horse racing to run wild. The sport lacks a national regulating body, so the individual clubs are responsible for monitoring the races. Thailand has not followed the rest of the racing world in requiring pre-race drug tests on horses. Only the top three finishers are tested, leaving the drowsy, doped-up losers and their owners in the clear. Racing-day officials–or stewards–regularly fine or suspend jockeys for tanking races, but they dare not question the powerful owners. “We asked one jockey why he pulled his horse, and the answer was, ‘The owner told me to’,” says White. “That pretty much ended the investigation.”
And who are these unscrupulous owners? No one is willing to publicly identify them other than as “current and former politicians, retired Army and police generals and members of powerful Thai families.” Chamlong Ratawakun, chairman of the Royal Turf Club in Bangkok, says conspiring owners are to blame for the drop in average attendance from 25,000 to 12,000 on race day. “Some owners are very bad, frankly speaking,” he says. “They fix racing, which is a headache. I cannot say which ones, but we know there are some.”
Politicians have tried as best they can to ignore what they consider an un-savory industry–and a political minefield. “The government can’t take action because they’d be at the barrel end of a gun,” says Edward Thangarajah, former sports editor of the Bangkok Post, who has covered horse racing for decades. “If you’re an anti-gambling politician, you will lose your next election.” The Interior Ministry oversees horse racing, but has done virtually nothing to clean up the industry. (Interior Minister Purachai Piemsomboom did not reply to NEWSWEEK’s requests for an interview.)
Meanwhile, the purse strings at the racetracks are getting tighter. Sehgal, the Royal Bangkok official, says his club currently makes only 5 percent profit off the $1.6 million average gross per race day, but much of that is eaten up by overhead. “At this rate, we cannot survive,” he says. Race officials want to sit down with the Interior Ministry to plead for looser restrictions on horse-race betting in a desperate bid to increase revenues. “We’re planning to get together to make racing a clean, family sport,” says Anothai, vice chairman of racing at Royal Bangkok. “If we close down… the jockeys, the trainers, the track employees will all be unemployed.”
But some feel closing down the race tracks may be the best way to save them. Guna-Tilaka, the horse owner, says the prospect of 300,000 angry, laid-off workers might be the only thing that pushes the government into action. Others remain optimistic that the industry can be saved if owners will only clean up their act. One racing official put the industry’s future life at two to three years if no changes are made soon. For the owners, post time is approaching.
