Horse at Belterra mistakenly disqualified for betting purposes over HISA whip rule

Stewards at Belterra Park in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Wednesday disqualified a horse from the pari-mutuel pools after penalizing the horse’s rider for excessive use of the whip in an apparent misapplication of new national rules regarding penalties for whip infractions.

Perkeo, ridden by Eder Martinez, was placed last in the five-horse field after stewards posted the inquiry sign in the $13,800 race for $8,000 claimers. Rules in place since July 1 under the aegis of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority call for disqualifications of horses for some whip-use violations, but those disqualifications are supposed to be enforced for purse money only, not for pari-mutuel purposes, according to officials.

In the replay of the race, Martinez appears to strike Perkeo between 8-10 times after entering the stretch. The HISA rule permits six legal strikes during the entirety of a race, with limits on multiple uses of the crop without giving a horse “two strides” to respond. The footnotes in the chart of the race state that Perkeo was disqualified to last “for excessive use of the whip during the course of the stretch run.”

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A spokesperson for HISA said in a statement that the authority’s officials spoke to Ohio’s stewards on Thursday morning to reiterate that the rules do not require disqualification from the official pari-mutuel results. “To be clear, violation of the crop rule does not affect the order of finish or pari-mutuel wagering; it only affects purse earnings and/or jockey suspension after the fact,” the statement said. “This has been well-established in the materials and educational sessions that have been provided to stewards across the country. There was some confusion in Ohio on this rule over the last couple of days. This has now been clarified with the Ohio Board of Stewards as of this morning.”

Belterra officials did not respond to requests for comment by early afternoon on Thursday.

Mindy Coleman, the legal counsel for The Jockeys’ Guild – which opposes the HISA regulation on excessive whip use – said on Thursday that the rule requires disqualification only from purse earnings. In addition, she said that HISA officials made it clear in meetings in the run-up to the July 1 implementation of a batch of its rules that horses were not to be disqualified from the pari-mutuel pools.

“They had reiterated on a number of occasions that it wasn’t supposed to affect the wagering,” Coleman said.

The rule puts whip-use violations into three categories: class 3, class 2, and class 1. A class 3 violation is one to three strikes over the limit; class 2 is four to nine strikes over the limit; and a class 3 violation is 10 or more strikes above the limit. Any class 2 or class 1 violation requires a horse to be disqualified “from purse money,” according to the rule. There is no mention of disqualifying the horse from the official pari-mutuel results.

The total amount bet in the win, place, and show pools on the race was $10,639, according to the chart of the race. The total in the exacta pool was $5,926, and the total in the trifecta pool was $3,065.

In similar situations in which a horse is mistakenly removed from the pari-mutuel results, many tracks have elected to pay off on both results. That remedy has been made far simpler and wide-reaching since the advent of account wagering, in which electronic records of all bets can be easily identified.