Santa Anita to restore rolling doubles

ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita will resume offering rolling doubles with an 18 percent takeout rate at the start of its spring-summer meeting April 25, the track announced Friday.

The decision was made after discussions with the Thoroughbred Owners of California, whose board of directors approved the plan Friday.

The resumption of rolling doubles reverses the current plan of offering three daily doubles each day – on the first two races, the fourth and fifth races, and the last two races – which has been in place since the start of the winter-spring meeting Dec. 26.

At the start of the current meeting, the takeout on daily doubles was cut from 22.68 percent to 18 percent when the number of daily doubles per day was reduced.

For the spring-summer meeting, daily doubles will be offered starting with the first race through the next-to-last race.

TOC president Joe Morris said the restoration of rolling doubles had been discussed in recent weeks with track executives. Morris said data from daily-double wagering at the current meeting, combined with data that will be gathered on daily-double wagering from the spring-summer meeting, will be used to determine the betting format for future meetings.

“We’ll have two experiments to see what it will tell us,” he said.

Morris said there was no immediate plan to restore the place pick all, which was discontinued prior to the start of the current meeting.

The Santa Anita spring-summer meeting runs from April 25 to June 29.