Gambling in American History

The Racing Hall of Fame and Museum

The National Museum of Racing and the Thoroughbred Racing’s Hall of Fame have been established and located in Saratoga Springs, New York, near the historic Saratoga track. The museum opened its doors in 1950, and the Hall of Fame was created at the site in 1955. As of 1998, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Hall of Fame included 154 thoroughbreds, 77 jockeys, and 71 trainers. They are selected by a special panel of 125 experts from nominations made by leading media writers and commentators. Among the leading members of the Hall of Fame are the following horses and competitors.

A Selected List of Leading Thoroughbred Horses

Affirmed
Affirmed, the great-grandson of Native Dancer, won the Triple Crown in 1978 under the saddle of Steve Cauthen. In a three-year career, Affirmed won twenty-two of twenty-nine races and finished out of the money only one time. Affirmed was owned by Louis Wolfson and trained at his Harbor View Farm in Florida.  As two-year-olds, Affirmed and Alydar began a series of ten races that captured the attention of all horse enthusiasts. They raced six times as two-year-olds, with Affirmed victorious four times. As three-year-olds, Affirmed finished first and Alydar second in all Triple Crown races – the only time two horses have done that. In a subsequent race, Affirmed won again but was disqualified. Affirmed also finished his Triple Crown year with a loss to the previous year’s Triple Crown winner, Seattle Slew, and then had an out-of-the-money finish in a race where his saddle slipped. Nonetheless, Affirmed was proclaimed to be the horse of the year. As a four-year-old he repeated the honor of being horse of the year.
Cigar
Cigar ran to nineteen victories in thirty-three starts over a four-year career. His mark of fame came in 1996 as a six-year-old when he galloped to his sixteenth consecutive win, tying a record set by Citation. Cigar was raised at Allen Paulsen’s Brookside Farm in Kentucky, after being born in Maryland. He was the great-grandson of Northern Dancer. The future record-running horse did not race until he was three years old, and he bypassed the Triple Crown. He won only two of nine races as a three-year-old, and it was discovered that he had chips in the bones of each knee. Arthroscopic surgery corrected the trouble, but he still won only two of six races as a four-year-old. The wins were his last two races that year, and they were the beginning of a streak. In 1995 in the Donn Handicap, his leading challenger was Holy Bull, the horse of the year for 1994. Holy Bull took a misstep and incurred a career-ending injury. Critics discounted Cigar’s victory even though he was leading when Holy Bull’s accident happened. Soon, however, Cigar was defeating other “Grade I” fields in the Pimlico Special Handicap, the Massachusetts Handicap, and the Hollywood Gold Cup Handicap, also the Woodward Stakes, the Jockey Gold Cup, and most impressively, the 1995 Breeder’s Cup Classic. The season was a perfect ten for ten, and Cigar’s winning streak was at twelve. Cigar won horse of the year honors as well as the Eclipse Award as the older male champion. In 1996 Cigar raced to four straight victories at the Dubai World Cup, the Donn Handicap, the Massachusetts Handicap, and the Arlington Citation Challenge. That sixteenth win came in a race especially created for a national television audience.
Cigar tied Citation’s record, but the chance for seventeen victories in a row was lost when his jockey, Jerry Bailey, could not slow his pace, and he succumbed to exhaustion and a second-place finish three and a half lengths behind Dare and Go in the Pacific Classsic at Del Mar. He won one more time before being turned out to stud. His career produced prizes of $9,999,815. The prize money was his crowning glory, as he was a failure at stud. He was sterile. Cigar was moved to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington so that his many admiring fans could come and look him over – another kind of pleasurable retirement.
Citation
Citation, a bay colt, won the Triple Crown for Calumet Farms in 1948.  He competed four years: 1947, 1948, 1950, and 1951. He ran 45 times, with 32 firsts, 10 seconds, 2 thirds, and only 1 out-of-the-money run. Injuries kept Citation off the track in 1949, and the horse never regained his Triple Crown form afterwards, but his owner, Warren Wright, requested that he keep running in order to become the first one-million-dollar purse winner. He did that for his owner, retiring in the middle of the 1951 season. In the course of his race career, Citation put together a string of sixteen wins, a record that held for over five decades until it was equaled by Cigar. Citation was a horse with both speed and staying power and a “killer’s instinct” that craved victory.
Count Fleet
Count Fleet ran only two years, competing in 21 races, winning 16, placing second in 4, and third in 1. Among Count Fleet’s victories were the Triple Crown races in 1943, in which he was ridden by the legendary Johnny Longden. Count Fleet was the offspring of the 1928 Kentucky Derby winner, Reigh Count, and Quickly, a sprint filly. Because he had suffered a hoof injury during the Wood Memorial, Count Fleet was challenged by several horses in the Kentucky Derby. He was still the favorite, and he won over Blue Swords by three lengths. That did it for most of the others. Only three challengers showed up at the Preakness, where he galloped to a win over Blue Swords by eight lengths. That made the Belmont only a three-horse race, and Count Fleet flew by the competition, winning with a twenty-five-length lead, unsurpassed in any Triple Crown event until Secretariat’s Belmont run of 1973. Count Fleet’s time was a record for the Belmont, and he actually won with an injured ankle. He was immediately retired to stud. There he continued his greatness, as he became racing’s leading sire. He fathered thirty-eight stakes winners, as well as female offspring that produced another 119 stakes winners, including Kelso. Count Fleet was retired from stud in 1966 and lived until age thirty-three, dying in 1973.
Eclipse
The “first champion” English thoroughbred, Eclipse, was foaled in 1764. Eclipse was a great-great-grandson of Darley Arabian. He began training and racing at age five and ran matched heats of four miles each. He won every race he entered, but his true fame is for posterity. Over 80 percent of all racing thoroughbreds today can trace their bloodlines to this champion.
John Henry
John Henry started 83 races over an eight-year career. He won 39 and was second 15 times while amassing $6,591,860 in prizes. He was not a fast starter as a career horse. While a three-year-old, he was purchased sight unseen for $25,000. He was born in 1975 at Kentucky’s Golden Chance Farm, and seemingly no one wanted the horse. In 1980, however, he hit his stride as he won 6 straight stakes races. In 1981, he won 8 of his 10 starts. In the most recognized of his runs that year, he was ridden by Bill Shoemaker as he won the first Arlington Million. John Henry won the Eclipse Award for older horses and also was named horse of the year. Over the next two years, injuries kept his starts down, but in 1984 he returned to prominence with 6 victories in 9 races. In 1985 he retired to the Kentucky Horse Park, as the leading money winner of all time.
Kelso
In 1960 Kelso was voted the champion male three-year-old and also the horse of the year. He won 8 of 9 races. The honors came even though he did not run that year until after the Triple Crown cycle had ended. But once running, he kept running for six more years, amassing a total of 39 victories, 31 in stakes races, as well as 12 seconds in his 63 starts. He won $1,977,896 in prizes. Kelso was durable, winning a record five designations as horse of the year. He also set track records at eight different courses. Often he ran with the disadvantage of extra weights as race organizers tried to give the competition a chance. Kelso was born in 1957 on the Claiborne Farm of Paris, Kentucky. He retired after running only one start in 1966 at the age of nine. He lived to be twenty-six, dying at the du Pont’s Woodstock Farm in Maryland in 1983.
Man O’War
Man O’War was designated to be the greatest horse of the twentieth century by Blood-Horse Magazine. All agree that he was the “super horse” of 1919 and 1920, winning all of his eleven races the latter year. As he was not entered in the Kentucky Derby, he did not achieve the Triple Crown. Nonetheless Man O’War, called “Big Red,” is still considered by some to be the greatest racehorse in history.  In his two-year career he had twenty first-place finishes and only one second place. His second-place finish came in the 1919 Sanford Stakes. He lost to a decided underdog by the name of Upset. As a result of that race a new word, upset, was introduced into the vocabulary of sports enthusiasts and applied to victories by underdogs. Man O’War’s record of twenty victories in twenty-one starts has only once been surpassed. In his final race, the Kenilworth Gold Cup, he defeated Sir Barton, the previous year’s Triple Crown winner, by seven lengths. Man O’War also was accomplished in stud, as he fathered War Admiral, the Triple Crown winner of 1937. Man O’War lived to be thirty. He died in 1947, and his funeral was broadcast by radio to the nation. The site of his grave, now at the Kentucky Horse Park, is marked by a 3,000-pound sculptured likeness.
Native Dancer
In 1952 as a two-year-old, Native Dancer ran to nine straight victories, sharing horse of the year honors with One Count. Native Dancer was born on the Scott Farm near Lexington, Kentucky, in March 1950, and he was raised on his owner’s – Alfred Vanderbilt’s – Sagamore Farm in Maryland. He won his first race at Jamaica in April 1952, and his second race only four days later. The speed of his entries was probably a training error, as he had to be rested for three months with bruised shins. He again picked up his frantic pace, however, winning the Flash Stakes at Saratoga and then three more victories within the next three weeks. He added four more victories before the end of the season. In 1953 he picked up the pace with two more victories in the Gotham Stakes and the Wood Memorial. He became the heavy odds-on favorite to win the Kentucky Derby going away. That victory proved to be elusive, however. In the first turn of the race he was bumped by a long shot, and he ended up in heavy traffic. Finally he burst loose from the crowd and charged at the leader, Dark Star, gaining on him all the way. Alas, “all the way” was not long enough; the finish line came too soon. Native Dancer finished second by a head. Two weeks later, Native Dancer defeated Dark Star and the field in the Preakness. He kept on winning – the Belmont Stakes, the Dwyer Stakes at Aqueduct, the Arlington Classic, and the Travers Stakes. At age four, he added three more victories, and he was designated as the horse of the year, after which he was retired. He had won a record twenty-one of twenty-two races. At stud at Sagamore Farm, he sired forty-four stakes winners, including Kentucky Derby winner Kauai King. Native Dancer was the grand sire of Mr. Prospector—the greatest sire of all time, and he also sired the mother of Canada’s greatest horse, Northern Dancer. Native Dancer died in 1967.
Secretariat
Secretariat was a very strong chestnut colt born on 30 March 1970. He was known as “Big Red”, the same nickname as Man O’War had. Secretariat’s father was Bold Ruler, horse of the year in 1957, and his mother Somethingroyal, a horse who never ran a race. The greatest horse of the last half-century was owned by the Penny Chenery and Meadows Stable and carried blue and white colors. He was trained by Lucien Laurin and ridden by jockey Ron Turcotte. As a two-year-old he lost his first race but then showed dominance in the next eight runs, winning all but the last, which he lost as a result of a disqualification. He was named horse of the year in 1972, the first two-year-old to win the honor. In 1973, he was ready for the Triple Crown. His warm-up races went fine until he had a weak performance in the Woodward Memorial owing to a painful abscess. Although many doubted that he had the stamina, he was ready for the Kentucky Derby. He won going away with a Derby record time, 1:59:40, the only time a horse has run the one and one-quarter miles under two minutes.  In the Preakness he won by two and a half lengths, in what would have been a record time had the track clock functioned. His competition was intimidated. There were only five horses in the Belmont. Secretariat left them in the dust, winning by a phenomenal thirty-one lengths, in a record time of 2:24, more than two seconds faster than the track record. His final race was at the Canadian International at Woodbine Track in Toronto, after which he again was named horse of the year. He retired to stud at Claiborne Farm in Lexington, where in addition to the mares, he attracted over 10,000 visitors a year until he died in 1989. The source of Secretariat’s extraordinary stamina was discovered after his death, when an autopsy revealed that his heart was 50 percent larger than normal size.

Types of Races

In addition to races of various distances and races for certain kinds of horses (races for mares only, races for horses that have never won before – called maiden races, or races only for two-year-olds or for three-year-olds), there are four basic kinds of races: claiming races, allowance races, handicap races, and stakes races.
Claiming Races
Most races are claiming races. An owner who puts a horse into a claiming race is, in effect, putting the horse up for sale. Registered persons can claim the horse for a price equal to the purse of the race. The claimers must present cash or a certified check to a race official before the race starts. If two or more persons claim the same horse, a roll of the dice decides who purchases the horse. The ownership of the horse changes when the race begins; however, the old owner retains the purse for the race if the horse is a winner. Claiming races are a mechanism for selling horses that have not met the expectations of their owners. The prices received for the horses are generally below those that are exchanged in horse auctions.
Allowance Races
Allowance races are usually a step above claiming races in quality. The track secretary accepts applications for entry and then balances the qualifying horses by adding or subtracting weights carried by individual horses. For horses that have performed well in the past, winning races and bigger purses, weights are added to the saddles, making the horse have to work harder in the race. Horses that have not won or have won only maiden races or claiming races might be able to take weight loads off. The weights are assigned by a specific formula. There could be as much as a ten-pound difference or more between the horses with the best and worst records.
Handicap Races
As in allowance races, the track secretary assigns extra weights to favored horses in handicap races. The weights, however, are assigned not according to a fixed formula but in accordance with how the secretary feels the horse would perform without extra weights. The secretary is seeking to truly make the contest “a horse race”, that is, a race in which all horses stand relatively the same chances for reaching the finish wire in the lead. In handicap races, the trainers and jockeys know that the racing secretary is seeking to have a balanced race. Therefore, if they gain a very large lead in the race, they tend to adopt a strategy of holding back somewhat so their victory will not appear as large as it otherwise could be. By winning closely instead of running away with the race, they win favor with the secretary, who may not assign as much weight to them in the next race run by the horse.
Stakes Races
The most important races are stakes races. In these races the owners pay a set of fees beginning at the time they apply to enter a horse in the race, then another fee when the track secretary accepts their entry, and a subsequent fee or fees when they appear at the track on the day of the race. All the fees are added into the purse. The leading stakes race in the United States is the Kentucky Derby; other races such as in the Breeder’s Cup series have large fees. The entrant to the Kentucky Derby may incur fees as large as several hundred thousand dollars. The track may also add money into the purse for a stakes race. These races attract the best horses, and they all run carrying the same weights.  Most run all out and seek to win by the biggest margins possible. Strong wins in stakes races can be translated into very good prices if the owners wish to sell the horse and also for stud services if the horse is retired.
In all the races mares are given a five-pound discount – that is, they run with a weight load five pounds lighter than all the other horses in stakes races or claiming races, or five pounds less than they would otherwise carry in allowance or handicap races. There are special races just for mares; however, there are no races that are exclusively for stallions.

Racing Participants

Owners
Owners of horses purchase horses and cover all costs for their maintenance and training, as well as track entry fees for stakes races. Although owners may be serious businesspeople who see racing as a way of accumulating wealth, few owners can actually make money in horse racing. Costs for maintaining a racehorse approximate $30,000 a year, whereas the average racehorse achieves winnings that are below $10,000. In the past, racing attracted many moderately successful businesspeople who calculated the excitement of being in the “racing game” and assumed there would be losses but that the losses could be subtracted from their business income for tax advantages. The 1986 tax reforms made such write-offs much more difficult; hence many otherwise willing businesspeople moved out of racing. Racing also attracts the rich, who wish to be in the game without serious qualms about losses they might incur because their horses cannot win races. Some of these owners willingly pay the very high fees to have their horses in the major stakes races, thus giving the best fields of horses several “sure losers”, running against odds of 50–1, 60–1, 70–1, or even greater. But then, maybe one out of seventy times their horses can score a major upset. The winning owners are given 80 percent of the purse of the race if their horses are winners. In most cases, to be a winner – of some of the purse – the horse must finish in one of the first four spots. In major races, part of the purse may go to the fifth-place horse. One of the major jobs of the owner is to select a trainer for the horse.
Trainers
The trainer is in charge of the horse twenty-four hours a day, every day. He or she has been called the “Captain of the Stable”. The trainer is responsible for doing everything that gets the horse ready to come to the track and race, makes decisions regarding the races in which the horse will run, and advises owners when to sell the horse or when to buy horses. Of course, in these decisions – and the decision to put a horse into a claiming race – he or she must have the approval and confidence of the owner. Usually if there is not a good relationship when these major decisions are made, the trainer will refuse to work for the owner. The trainer picks the facilities for training and keeping the horse and also makes another big decision: He or she chooses the jockey for the races. A trainer receives 10 percent of the purses won by the horses he or she has trained, as well as fees from the horse owner for the activities involved.
Placing Judges
Three judges watch the finish line and independently declare which horse finishes first, second, third, and fourth (or fifth if that spot is “in the money”). If they do not have a unanimous agreement, they request a photo of the finish. They also seek photos if the race is close for any of the four positions.
Track Veterinarians
There are veterinarians at each track. The official one must certify that each horse is physically able to compete in the race. He determines that no illegal drugs have been put into the system of the horses if he suspects they might have been.

Horse racing is one of mankind’s oldest sports, going back to the earliest days of recorded time. There has been a variety of types of racing and breeds of horses engaged in racing. Thoroughbreds are the most recognized breed of racehorses, but there are also quarter horses, Arabians, and standardbreds.
There are races over straight courses and oval tracks, from one-fourth mile to several miles. The standard distance of races is measured in furlongs; one furlong is one-eighth of a mile. Tracks may be grass or dirt. In addition to mounted races (called flats) and harness races, there are obstacle races called steeplechases.
Certain races command much more attention than others. These include the championship races known as the Triple Crown or Breeders Cup for thoroughbreds, the Breeders Crown and the Hambletonian for standardbreds (harness horses), and the American Futurity for quarter horses. There are horse races for two-year-olds, three-year-olds, and older horses. There are also maiden races for horses that have never won a race before. Other varieties of races include allowance and handicap races, stakes races, and claiming races.
The majority of states have some forms of race betting. Thirty-seven states allow thoroughbred racing, 27 states allow quarter horse racing, and 26 states have harness racing. Additionally, 25 states allow offtrack betting, and 39 states have intertrack betting facilities.  Every Canadian province has pari-mutuel betting on horse races. The ten provinces and the Yukon permit harness racing, seven provinces and the Yukon allow thoroughbred racing, and nine provinces and the Yukon allow quarter horse race betting. All provinces and the Yukon permit intertrack betting as well as telephone betting and offtrack betting. There are also tracks in Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean island states of Antigua, Barbados, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Martinique, and Trinidad.
In the United States approximately 6 percent of all gambling losses in 1998 were by pari-mutuel horse bettors (Christiansen 1999). Track winnings (and other moneys taken out of betting pools) totaled $3.3 billion in 1998. Although on-track betting has declined a great deal over the past three decades, the total amounts bet on horse races have increased slightly, going up an average of 2.3 percent a year since 1982. All gambling in the United States has increased 10.4 percent each year since 1982. There are approximately 150 tracks in the United States, with several of these operating only during short fair seasons. Canada has approximately forty tracks; most of them for harness racing events.
Gambling operations have supported racing ever since it became a popular form of entertainment. There is a variety of betting systems, but in modern times, the pari-mutuel system has replaced almost all other systems at the track in North America. Other systems included pooled and auction betting, as well as betting with bookies who guarantee odds of horses at time of bets. In recent years betting revenues have shown only minuscule growth, and tracks have sought other opportunities to gain revenues. They have benefited from intertrack, offtrack, and even telephone betting. Many tracks see their future in converting facility use to slot machine and video machine gambling.

History of Horse Racing

Records of horse racing date back to 4000b.c. or earlier. At that time Babylonian soldiers used chariots not only in wartime battles but also in staged races. By 1500 b.c., Assyrians incorporated chariot races into their recreational lives. The early breeds of horses that were available to the peoples of known Western “historical” societies were small in size. It would take two or more to pull a chariot, and individual horses could not be mounted by riders. A statue in a New York museum shows an Egyptian racing a mounted horse, however. The statue dates to 2000 b.c. In 624 b.c. there was a mounted horse race during the 33d Olympic games in Greece. Records suggest that the Greeks captured stronger horses from Arabs and Persians.
There was very likely betting on the Greek races, as gambling was part of their society. There is little question that the Romans bet on horse races. Races were held in Rome very soon after the city was founded. Racing events became an essential part of the entertainment of the masses of Roman citizens. Racing was also seen as a way of encouraging the development of a better, stronger, faster stock of horses for military uses. Romans are also credited with bringing their horses to the British Isles, where they raced against and also mixed with Celtic ponies. In about a.d. 200, the Romans held their first formal race meeting in England.
During the first millennium, racing captured the attention of all the civilizations throughout the Mediterranean world and farther east.  The Arabian societies, which fell under the influence of Islam, adhered to prohibitions against gambling, but they made two exceptions. It was permissible to bet on scholarship contests involving children, as doing so encouraged learning the Koran, and it was permissible to bet on horse races, as doing so encouraged improvements in breeding that would result in better horses that could be used in holy battles with the infidel.
In England, horse racing and betting flourished. In the Middle Ages, horse-race betting took on its identity as the Sport of Kings. Henry II established weekly races at fairgrounds about 1174, and his son John kept a royal stable of racehorses. Serious breeding efforts and formal racetracks date back to the sixteenth century. Henry VIII passed laws that sought to isolate racing stallions from ordinary horses. He also demanded that each of his dukes and archbishops keep at least seven stallions. The oldest sponsored British race was probably the Chester Cup, which was run in 1512 during Henry’s reign. The first stakes race (a race requiring owners to pool money for the winner’s prize) was held during King James’s reign in the early seventeenth century. Under James’s direction, the racetrack at Newmarket initiated racing. During the Cromwell interlude a Puritan dominance of England precluded racing, but the activity came back with a vengeance with the Restoration and Charles II. He established new stakes royal races, and in 1674, the king himself mounted a steed and ran to a first-place finish at Newmarket.
Racing developed over the course of the seventeenth century in England as breeding practices were regularized, lineages were recorded, and tracks were improved. The notion of accurate lineage became even more critical with the arrival of three special horses in England toward the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. Every thoroughbred horse running in the world today is descended from these three horses: Byerley’s Turk, Darley Arabian, and Godolphin Arabian.
In the seventeenth century, the purest breeds of horses were to be found in Turkey and Arabia. In 1688, British captain Byerley captured a horse from a Turkish officer at Buda. The horse that became known as Byerley’s Turk was probably born in 1680. He was brought to England, where his breeding career began. The second horse was called Darley Arabian. He was twenty years younger than Byerley Turk. He was bought by Englishman Thomas Darley at Aleppo in 1704 and sent to a farm in Yorkshire, where he performed stud duties until 1730. One of his sons was sent to North America. The third horse, Godolphin Arabian, was born in Yemen in 1724. He was first exported to Syria and then to Tunis, where he was given to the king of France. Englishman Edward Coke of Derbyshire purchased the horse in Paris and later sold him to the second earl of Godolphin for stud at his estate near Newmarket.
The first horses to arrive in the Western Hemisphere came west with the second voyage of Columbus in 1495. Columbus used horses in his conquest over indigenous populations in the Caribbean region. Thereafter, every ship from Spain carried horses. Their numbers multiplied in the Caribbean islands, and Cortez took horses from Cuba to Mexico in 1519 and used them as he overwhelmed his Aztec Native adversaries. Horses soon were being exported to the far reaches of South America. Many were also captured by Native Americans, and some ran off to start a wild horse population that was found on the American plains and into the Southwest. On some occasions the horses became a part of the food supply for desperate conquistadors and explorers. But the Spanish also raced the stock in Cuba and Mexico during the sixteenth century.
English settlers came to Virginia and New England in the early decades of the seventeenth century. The first horses arrived at Jamestown Colony in 1610, but the six mares and one stallion were eaten as other food supplies dwindled during the next winter. Subsequent ships brought more horses, including twenty mares in 1620, and a solid permanent stock of horses was established. The Virginia colonists also purchased horses, which had descended from Spanish imports, from Native peoples. As soon as horses were in the American colonies, horse racing began. The Virginia colony passed a law allowing racing in 1630.  The previous year horses arrived in New England. By mid-century, racing was common all along the eastern seaboard, as the stock of horses was pervasive.
Cleared land was at a premium in these early colonial years, so most of the racing was on village streets or on narrow paths through woods. The notion of the sprint race developed, a precursor of quarter horse racing, which was popularized in the American West. Originally the betting on races was conducted among the owners of the horses. Disputes over betting and the results of the races were submitted to the law courts for resolution. The first race track in the Americas was established by Richard Nicholls, the British governor of New York, immediately after his countrymen had taken hostile possession of New York (New Amsterdam) from Dutch settlers in 1665. Nicholls built a large, oval, wide-open, grass track in present-day Jamaica, Long Island.
Other colonies followed by building their own tracks. The tracks allowed for much longer races. Indeed, the four-mile race became common. Racing was formalized, and large purses were offered to winners. At first, all betting had been among players, but with tracks, entrepreneurs developed systems of pooled betting. A pool seller would offer a wager at set odds, and then he would seek to sell chances on all the horses. If he could not sell all the horses and all the bets in the pool, he would be subject to taking losses on the races. The popularity of the tracks led more and more people to betting, including members of the less wealthy classes. As a result, several colonies passed laws banning racing.
Nevertheless, betting continued through the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. Then the stock of racing horses became critical to the war effort, and racing stopped. Prior to the war, several colonies had developed jockey clubs that would establish the rules for all the races and to a degree would replace the civil law courts as the arbiters of disputes regarding wagers and race results.
The development of the breed and racing stock in Canada has been related to events in other countries as well as indigenous factors. The French began settlements in Quebec City in 1608. As the weather was quite severe there and also in other French Canadian settlements, horses were viewed as work animals. They ate and they worked, performing tasks on the farm and also in transportation. The population did not see them as frivolous objects that could be raced for fun. The motherland in Europe—France—did not send horses to Quebec for racing purposes. In France racing was an activity of royalty. During the French Revolution the rebels who brought down the royalty purposely killed all the racehorses in France, as they were a symbol of autocracy. There the activity of racing was lost for generations and also lost as an activity that could be exported to cousins in North America. By the time of the American Revolution, Quebec was part of a British colonial system. Some French farmers experimented in developing trotters; however, most of these horses were sold to be run in the United States. Nonetheless, a horse track opened in Montreal in 1828. Most of the thoroughbreds running in Montreal were initially from the United States. In 1836, however, King William IV of England commissioned a flat race (alternatively called the King’s Plate and Queen’s Plate) for Canadian-bred horses. Montreal remained the center of Canadian racing for a quarter-century.
Ontario (Upper Canada) developed steeplechases, as an elite aristocratic population familiar with fox hunting had migrated northward during the American Revolution. With increased populations, Ontario turned its sights to thoroughbreds. In 1860 the Toronto Jockey Club was able to persuade racing officials and horse owners to move the Queen’s Plate race to the Woodbine Track, where the race is still run. The Civil War in the United States years saw many horses from the South being moved into Ontario. More Canadian tracks developed. Canadian racing also received a boost when moral authority in the United States caused much racing to be declared illegal in all but a few states in the first decade of the twentieth century. This boost, which had resulted in many small Canadian tracks’ being opened, also brought in many corrupting elements. An epidemic of rigged races and other untoward practices resulted in Canada’s banning racetrack betting in the 1920s.  In the 1930s racing was revived with a pari-mutuel system of betting in place.
In the United States, racing had a revival after the Revolutionary War, with most of the action being found in the South. Kentucky established itself as the premier location for horse breeding. Newly settled Western areas attracted racing interests. The era brought an end to long endurance races, as one-mile dashes and quarter-mile runs became popular. Quasi-official “stud books” were initiated to record the identities of all racing horses.
The Civil War devastated racing in the South. Only in the border state of Kentucky did racing continue without interruption. In the meantime, New York reestablished its earlier predominance in the sport. The Saratoga track opened in 1863 and became the country’s leading facility. Major stakes races were started, the first being the Travers Stakes run at Saratoga in 1864. Three new stakes races took on the aura of America’s Triple Crown. These were the Belmont Stakes, first run in New York City in 1867; the Preakness, first run at Baltimore’s Pimlico Track in 1873; and the Kentucky Derby, which had its initial run at Louisville’s Churchill Downs in 1875.
In 1894 the Jockey Club of New York was formed by the leading horse owners. The club set down rules for all thoroughbred racing, and the next year the state legislature decreed that the rules would be enforced on all tracks. Other states’ lawmakers also accepted the New York Jockey Club’s rules for their own tracks. The Jockey Club also took over the American Stud Book and thereby made it the universal book of registry for all thoroughbreds in the country. The rules and organization of regulation helped racetrack betting survive in New York at the turn of the century, whereas it was being rendered illegal in most other states. In Kentucky racing survived with state intervention in the form of the creation of the first state racing commission in the United States in 1906.
A wave of reform at the turn of the twentieth century that led to the demise of lotteries and the closing of casinos in New Mexico Territory and Arizona Territory and the state of Nevada also brought most racing to a standstill. Kentucky and Maryland survived as the only states allowing horse race betting through the reform era; policy in New York vacillated between tolerance and prohibition. Racing began its comeback in the 1920s and 1930s as states looked toward the gambling activity as a source for taxation revenues. The charge for a return to racing was helped with the introduction of the pari-mutuel system, as it centralized all betting, facilitating both control and also the extraction of taxation. Florida opened the Hialeah racetrack in 1925. A course opened in 1929 at Agua Caliente, Baja California, near Tijuana, serving the desires of California bettors before that state joined nine other states in legalizing pari-mutuel betting in 1933.
Other innovations also strengthened the growth of the sport. Power starting gates ensured that all horses were given an even beginning. Saliva tests were developed that could ensure that horses were not drugged. They were first used at Saratoga in 1932. In 1936 the photo finish was first used. The popularity of racing was also facilitated by illegal betting, which was encouraged by national bookie organizations that used wire services to instantaneously send information across the country to local street bookies and bookie shops.
During World War II racing remained a sport demanding public attention. Two horses, Count Fleet and Citation, won the Triple Crown in 1943 and 1948, respectively. Their presence made racing activity common conversation throughout the land. Horse racing peaked in the 1950s and 1960s with performances of star thoroughbreds such as Nashau, Swaps, and Native Dancer.
In 1966 Walter D. Osborne wrote, “The United States today is in the midst of the greatest boom in horseflesh since the invention of the gasoline engine”. What goes up sometimes comes down, however, and since the end of the 1960s, horse racing has been in a steady decline. Attendance at races has plunged drastically, and betting at on-track pari-mutuel windows has suffered accordingly. In the last three decades betting on racing at the tracks has gone from being the most popular form of gambling, with almost a legal monopoly of gambling activities in the United States, to being a very small sector of legal gambling – producing revenues under 8 percent of all legal gambling revenues. Only two factors have saved the betting sport from almost certain oblivion: (1) the introduction of revenues gained from off-track wagering and telephone betting and (2) the introduction of revenues from other gambling activity taking place on tracks and in card rooms (Hollywood Park, California), gambling machines (six states and four provinces), and sports betting (Tijuana).
There have been many suggestions for why racing has declined. Many have suggested that racing lost its edge by clinging to old “proven” methods that worked in an atmosphere of no competition.  Racing rejected opportunities to put its entertainment products on television as that media swept American culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Other professional sport events rushed to television. The public gave endorsements to baseball, football, and basketball as never before.
The baby boom generation that began to reach the age of majority in the 1960s did not relate to horses as did their fathers, or grandfathers. They were more focused upon automobiles as their form of transportation. More important, this emerging and now middle-aged generation was action oriented. Its members wanted their entertainment now, and they wanted entertainment to be constant. They did not see the excitement in watching horses run at a twenty-five-mile-per-hour clip for two minutes and then having to sit for thirty minutes before the action began again. They might ask why a sports fan would prefer horse racing to an auto race where cars spin around a track at 200 miles per hour for several hours.
The entertainment consumer of the latter part of the twentieth century did not want to have to devote time and energy to understanding what he or she was watching. It was not easy to understand the fine points of horse racing – that is, understanding enough for becoming a reasonably astute bettor-handicapper. When other forms of gambling—lottery, most casino games—became available to these consumers, their desire for racing products naturally declined.
Gaming competition is generally considered to be the major factor in the decline of racing. Additional factors surrounding the decline include the declining and aging condition of racing facilities – stands, betting areas, rest rooms. The tax “reform” legislation in the mid-1980s also took investment incentives away from businesspeople interested in racing.
The decline also fed upon itself, as prizes for horse race winners were taken from a betting pool. As bets were reduced in size, so too was money available for prizes. Lower prize money discouraged investors and also kept many from entering their horses into races.  The quality of racing was affected as lesser-quality entries were led to the post gates. In turn, public interest in racing lessened again. The state (and provincial) governments made the situations worse as they often responded to lower betting activity by increasing their tax take from the betting pool. This not only affected prizes but also made the return for bettors less desirable, hence reducing the incentive for betting.
Although tracks realize these factors, they find that reforms are at best stopgap measures only allowing them to barely survive. They must run faster and faster just to stay in place.

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In Honduras the “action” is found in two casinos at night, and in the plaza of the Tegucigalpa Cathedral by day. The poor people visit the marketplace each day. There they buy and sell groceries and lottery tickets. As with many less developed as well as several forward-looking countries, the lottery operations are of the poor, by the poor, and for the poor. People with no other jobs – and maybe no job possibilities – can sell tickets on consignment. The profits from the lottery are also designated to go to programs for the poor.
Honduras is a very poor country, and Tegucigalpa certainly does not have the airs of a national capital. Its streets are narrow and dusty, and many people seem to wander them without a sense of their destination. Cows graze on garbage that is thrown into a dry riverbed. The most visible commercial sign in the city is the Coca Cola sign on the side of a mountain just above the central business and government district. It seems to be a reminder to all that their independent sovereign country may not be totally in control of its own affairs – maybe people in Atlanta have as much control over their lives as they do. Although many Third World countries have towns and cities that could be called “quaint”, the presence of machine guns on each corner and outside of each major store or office building keeps the word quaint from entering the mind.
U.S. commercial interests are in Honduras, selling Coca-Cola and also running large banana plantations. They and their employees, as well as military personnel, provide a marketing base for the casinos. Unfortunately, the poverty of the country as well as the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 has weakened prospects for strong casino revenues.
Two casinos operate in Honduras: one in Tegucigalpa at the Honduran Maya Hotel; the other in the country’s business capital, San Pedro Sula, near the Hotel Copantl Sula. Private entrepreneurs from the United States operate the two hotels. One of the management teams is also active in the casino industry in Curacao; the other operator has a history of old ties to Cuban and London casinos.
Both casinos have roulette games, blackjack, and slot machines, and the casino at San Pedro Sula also has poker games, punto banco, and bingo sessions. The casino tax represents 20 percent of the gaming win.
I visited Honduras in January 1989 and discovered that the Casino Copan in San Pedro Sula had a feature unique among Western Hemisphere casinos. In the past the casino had difficulties in granting credit to players. Most of the players were local residents. When they were approached to pay back their loans, they considered it an affront to have an American demanding repayment of a loan to them. Courts were also reluctant to order locals, many of whom may have been living on modest means, to pay money to the “rich” American casinos owners. The casino decided to cut off all credit play, but then discovered that their crowds decreased considerably. The operators came up with a solution.  They found local agents who would be happy to purchase chips from the casino cage at a discount, and then loan the chips to the players. They would have all responsibility for collection on the loans, and if they made the collection, they of course would realize a good profit—as they purchased chips at a discount and also charged the players a loan fee. The loan agents were local residents in good standing and usually with good connections to judges and other local officials. The patrons borrowing chips from them would be sure to pay them back, as their standing as honorable citizens was at stake with these loans. The casino operators assured me that the loan agents did not use any unacceptable methods to collect loans. <

James Riddle Hoffa became an essential part of the Las Vegas casino industry when he arranged the financing of several new properties in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the use of pension funds of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, on Valentine’s Day in 1913. He was the son of a coal driller who died when Jimmy was seven years old. His mother soon moved the family to Detroit, where she secured employment in an automobile factory. Jimmy got his first job when he was eleven years old. Life was tough, and Hoffa responded to it with his fists, fighting and scrapping all the way. Through experiences in many hard jobs, Hoffa was drawn into the union movement.  He organized a strike at a Kroger’s grocery store where he worked in the stockroom. That successful effort resulted in his first affiliation with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (often referred to as the Teamsters’ union). He went on to work for the union, first in 1932 as a recruiter, then as a business agent, and soon as a leading organizer. In the mid-1930s, he became the president of Detroit Local 299. Hoffa rose in the Teamsters’ ranks, and in 1952 he became the chairman of the Michigan Conference of Teamsters. He joined in the efforts to help make David Beck the Teamsters’ president, and Hoffa got the vice presidency of the union as a result.
David Beck was the first victim of the U.S. Senate’s McClellan Committee hearings on union corruption. It was revealed that Beck had misused Teamsters’ pension funds, and he had to step down from the presidency in 1957. Hoffa became union president. The McClellan Committee, with its counsel Robert Kennedy, never ceased its attacks on the Teamsters’ union, now making Hoffa its target of choice. An ongoing battle between Kennedy and Hoffa ensued that lasted for almost a decade.
During his union presidency, the Teamsters’ union’s Central States Pension Fund became the leading source of funds for capital financing of Las Vegas casinos. Moe Dalitz turned to Hoffa for the money needed to build La Costa Country Club in California, the Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, and the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas. Hoffa financed the Dunes Casino through his personal attorney, Morris Shenker, and also the Landmark, the Four Queens, Aladdin, Circus Circus, and Caesars Palace. Caesars received the biggest Teamsters’ loans, over $20 million. The money was critical, as it came into Las Vegas at a time when organized crime interests tied to Meyer Lansky were pulling back from investments because they were coming under more and more scrutiny from federal investigators. The Hoffa pension fund money provided an interlude between Lansky capital and Howard Hughes capital financing. The Teamsters’ loans came at a price, even though interest rates were not high – actually quite the opposite. Through a variety of means, however, Hoffa reportedly received kickbacks and also access to casino operations. He could place his people in the casino, and he also could demand a piece of the action through different skimming-type mechanisms.
Although Hoffa lived a very modest middle-class lifestyle, the charges of corruption and misuse of funds came to rest at his doorstep. Robert Kennedy pursued a prosecution of Hoffa with a vigor that probably transcended notions of due process or adherence to constitutional liberties or values. After one unsuccessful prosecution in 1962, Hoffa was finally nailed with a conviction for tampering with the jury. In 1964 he was convicted again of misappropriating union funds. His appeals ran out, and in 1967 he stepped down from union office and went to prison for fifty-eight months.
President Nixon commuted Hoffa’s sentence in 1971 with a pardon decreeing that he could not hold union office again until 1980. In 1975 Hoffa was purportedly cooperating with federal authorities who were still investigating the misuse of Teamsters’ pension funds. Perhaps he was seeking to have his pardon changed so that he could reclaim the union presidency. That was not to be. On 31 July 1975 he disappeared. The presumption is that he was murdered, although his body was never recovered, and the crime has never been solved.
In 1936, Hoffa married Josephine Poszywak. They had a daughter, born in 1938, and a son, James Hoffa Jr., in 1941. The son is now the president of the Teamsters’ union. <

See Craps and Other Dice Games. <

Tourism is one of the mainstays of the Hawaiian economy. Therefore, many interests have sought to bring casinos into the state. The efforts go on unabated. The efforts have never won the support of the important decision makers, however, so Hawaii does not have casinos. Also, Hawaii has avoided having lotteries, charity gambling, or pari-mutuel wagering. There certainly is an underground offering gambling products in an illegal form, but leaders fear that bringing gambling into the open air of legality would only encourage bad elements. Hawaii is one of two states (the other is Utah) in which no form of gambling whatsoever is permitted under the law. <