Churchill Downs plans to offer as many as six head-to-head matchups on both the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks cards this year, as well as offer a pick six combining the six Grade 1 races on both cards, officials said on Tuesday. Churchill received approval for both the plans on Tuesday from the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. Following the meeting, Mike Ziegler, Churchill’s executive director of racing, said that the company has not yet determined how many head-to-head wagers will be offered during each card, but said the company asked for as many as six for each day to give it a number of options. “We’re going to wait to see what happens with the entries, and then we’ll figure out what we can do to offer some compelling matchups for bettors,” Ziegler said. :: DERBY WATCH: Top 20 Kentucky Derby contenders with comments from Jay Privman and Mike Watchmaker Head-to-head matchups offer one or more horses in a race against one or more horses. The bets have been tried sparingly over the years in racing, with measured success, but racetracks are exploring the bet types once again due to the growth in sports wagering in many U.S. states. Last year, the Breeders’ Cup offered seven head-to-head bets during its two-day event. The pick six linking all the Grade 1 races on the May 3 and May 4 cards, including the Derby and the Oaks, will have a $2 minimum and a mandatory payout, Ziegler said. Takeout on the head-to-head bets will be 17.5 percent, the same rate as straight bets, according to Ziegler. Takeout on the pick six will be 15 percent, a discount on the typical takeout rate for multi-leg bets.  Also at the Tuesday meeting, Dr. Mary Scollay, the commission’s executive director, gave a 10-minute educational presentation on a class of drugs called bisphosphonates, which have garnered attention over the past several months due to a spate of catastrophic injuries at Santa Anita Park in Southern California (Kentucky also had an uptick in catastrophic injuries last year). The presentation was intended as a means to inform the commission about how the drugs work and assess their prevalence in the racing industry in advance of the commission determining how to regulate the drugs. Scollay told the commissioners that interviews with racing, breeding, and sales constituents revealed that the drugs were possibly being administered to young horses in advance of auctions in order to improve how sesamoid bones look on radiographs, and that there was also evidence that older horses in training may have received the drugs for their painkilling effects. However, she cautioned that much is still unknown about the drugs, and that hard evidence tying their use to breakdowns did not yet exist. But, Scollay said, because the drugs disable cells in the bones that allow for diseased or distressed cells to be removed, which is a prerequisite for bone remodeling to occur, there is also ample reason to be concerned about their use. “We don’t have a lot of scientific evidence” that there is a tie-in to catastrophic injuries, she said. “We think so, but we don’t have proof.” The administration of bisphosphonates to young horses was rumored to be in practice prior to sales as long as five years ago, and various veterinary and regulatory agencies had marked the drugs for study at that time. However, calls to ban the drugs for any use in racing other than to treat navicular disease in horse 4 years old or older – which is the only FDA-approved use of the drugs – have risen from many quarters of the industry due to the spike in deaths in California. Several commissioners called for immediate action following Scollay’s presentation, but Scollay warned that the issue needed to go through a proper rule-making process to avoid any unintended consequences. She said that the Association of Racing Commissioners International is expected to issue a model rule following its August meeting, and that the Kentucky commission should wait until all the issues can be vetted before adopting a rule. “There needs to be a concerted effort for everyone in racing to regulate it, because otherwise we’re fooling ourselves that we are dealing with it,” Scollay said. “Everyone understands the urgency in dealing with this.” In the meantime, Scollay said that the publicity surrounding the off-label use of the drugs may be leading to extreme caution in the veterinary community about administering the medications, especially to young horses.  “I think we’ve gotten to the point where no one can claim ignorance on this,” said Bret Jones, a commission member who is the manager of bloodstock services for his family’s Airdrie Stud in Central Kentucky.