By Brian Mulligan

Face it, you can’t keep you head buried in the sand in this sport if you want to make a profit and in this day and age when the National Basketball Association referees are betting and possibly changing outcomes of games, you have to address the ‘cheater’ situation in racing.

In basketball, the easiest way for a ref to bet and cash is to manipulate the over/under. You can’t depend on just making bad calls, because Dwayne Wade or Kobe could just go crazy. But say if you bet the over, and you know that going into the 4^th quarter of a game you need 55 points to make the number go over, a ref could just call a ton of fouls early in the last quarter to assure that both teams would be shooting free throws in the bonus situation for 9 or more minutes of the quarter. That is called getting an edge and that’s a huge edge.

Granted, hoops is not horses. But it’s amazing how many basketball coaches gravitate to the game. Rick Pitino has been involved in a ton of horses. Bobby Knight and D. Wayne Lukas are very close friends, and one of my dear friends, Cotton Fitzsimmons, who was a 2-time Coach of the Year in the NBA, counted betting on horses as one of the few things he loved to do if he wasn’t spending time with his lovely wife, taking my money on the golf course, or teaching the Phoenix Suns how to win.

The newest cheating craze in racing is cobra venom and one of the world’s most accomplished trainers, Patrick Biancone, is now mute but being investigated. It seems the venom in crystalline form was found in a refrigerator in one of his tack rooms and labeled ‘Toxin’. This is a substance that is so powerful and allegedly many, many times more potent than morphine.

It is used to deaden a horse’s nerve, and therefore let the horse play with and run through pain.

This situation is not going to go away.  Venom has been rumored to be around for a long time now in thoroughbreds and standardbreds.

So what is the bettor, the normal guy who is not on the inside supposed to do?

Well, there are options. You could walk away from the game, try picking football, or maybe try making it to the final table of the World Series of Poker.

But if racing is in your blood, you will have to learn to adapt.

Look, we are all grown ups here. You don’t expect to bet and be given back that bet when it comes out that a race was not on the up and up but that is the nature of the game.

Granted, we would all like an even playing field in a perfect world, but it’s a complex issue. I don’t think a zero tolerance policy will work because we need full fields to fuel the monster and it’s hard for the ‘police’ to stay a step ahead of the druggists. But what the industry needs to do as a whole is to get uniform rules, testing, and procedures in place around the country to get a hold of the situation. That is at least a start.

There will always be a little larceny in the hearts of those in sports, whether it is racing, football, basketball, or even cricket.

A friend of mine, he’s not Oliver Stone, but sure writes and thinks like him, starts with every evaluation and handicapping process with a tainted eye. And although I don’t always accept his theories, it sure is easy to see where he is coming from.

Back to square one. If you suspect a trainer on your circuit is ‘using’ and getting his horses to roll, then start paying more attention to him. Just like with biases or new surfaces, you have to try to get on board and get a heads up before the masses.

There are many guys in Southern California who have been tainted by the drug issue. They include Mike Mitchell, Vlado Cerin, Jeff Mullins, Adam Kitchingman and even Doug O’Neill.

If you see those barns get cold, then maybe the heat is coming down on them. Conversely, if you see another maybe unfashionable barn get hot from nowhere, maybe this is the newest guy on the circuit to bend the rules a bit and try to put food on the table.

For the trainer and I would imagine the same would go for an athlete who wants to compete, either you join in or you are left by the wayside.

If you feel you need Roids to hit home runs, they you do. If you need to get an edge by using illegal stuff to win races, then it’s a moral question as to what to do.

For the bettor this is the new reality. If you want to play the game, you either try to figure out who is hot or not or just find another outlet.

When I started gambling, back some 45 years ago, I already knew the sulkys were dirty.

It didn’t stop me from making this sport a career, it just made me more vigilant to find out who is who on the back stretch.

Look for trends, winning and losing trends, and then adjust.