Far Hills steeplechase meet to offer parimutuel wagering

The one-day Far Hills Race Meeting scheduled for Oct. 20 in New Jersey is set to go ahead this year with live parimutuel wagering for the first time, the chief official of the meeting said on Tuesday.

Wagering will be offered this year on all seven races, including the Grade 1, $450,000 Grand National, according to Guy Torsilieri, the chairman of Far Hills. While the wagering menu has not yet been set, Tolisieri said the meeting will likely offer straight bets, exactas, trifectas, and a number of daily doubles throughout the day.

The debut of wagering on the steeplechase event follows several years of effort to allow for the practice, including legislation passed in 2016 enabling betting at the location. The initial plans were to debut wagering last year, but Tolisieri said that several logistical problems prevented Far Hills from going forward.

“It did give us an extra year for the planning and the setup,” Torsilieri said.

Bet-processing services are being provided by Monmouth Park, and all of the Far Hills races will also go out to all of the locations in Monmouth’s simulcast network. The Far Hills signal piggybacked on the simulcasting contracts that Monmouth negotiated for its own meet in Oceanport, Torsilieri said. Takeout rates on the bets will be the same as Monmouth’s takeout rates, which are 17 percent for straight wagers, 19 percent for exactas and daily doubles, and 25 percent on most other bets.

The Far Hills meet annually draws approximately 35,000 people, Torsilieri said. As at other steeplechase meetings, Tolisieri said that there has been “periodic social wagering” at the event in the past that management did not support, and that this year any informal bookmaking will be sought out and stopped.

Torsilieri said that Far Hills has no set goal in mind for handle this year, considering that event planners are in “uncharted territory.”

“I’d like to see a real nice large number, but, honestly, we don’t have a clue,” he said.

There will be approximately 60 betting locations throughout the grounds, including some private tellers for high-end clients, Torsilieri said. Races conducted under the auspices of the National Steeplechase Association are charted by Equibase, so past-performance information on the horses competing at Far Hills will be available on raceday.