Tampa Bay Downs in Oldsmar, Fla., will seek an “independent, third-party investigation” of a meltdown of the bet-processing network on Saturday that resulted in the track having to run its most prestigious race, the Tampa Bay Derby, as a non-wagering event, the track’s general manager said Sunday morning. Peter Berube, the top official at Tampa Bay, said that he has yet to receive a full explanation for the breakdown from officials at either AmTote, Tampa Bay’s bet-processing partner, or the company’s parent, 1/ST Racing. He said he had “never seen anything like it in my thirty years of racing” and said he has asked the Thoroughbred Racing Association, a racetrack trade group that operates an investigatory unit focused on betting issues, to conduct its own investigation into the matter. “We need an independent assessment,” Berube said. “This can’t happen. This was a complete meltdown. We need to know who was at fault and make sure this never happens again.” The tote malfunction, which also affected other tracks, including the 1/ST-owned tracks Santa Anita, Laurel, and Gulfstream, prohibited Tampa from running the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby as a wagering event. As of Sunday morning, the track had still not been able to refund early wagers that were made on the race, Berube said. The track also had to cancel the last race of the day, affecting the multi-race wagers ending on that race as well. The pricing of the Florida Oaks, run directly before the Tampa Bay Derby, was also affected by the outage. Tickets on that race were not redeemed until Sunday morning. Aidan Butler, the president of 1/ST, did not immediately return a phone call on Sunday morning. In a statement released to reporters on Saturday night, Butler said that the company has launched a “full-scale investigation into the loss of connectivity between Amtote and certain racetracks.” “It appears to be a wider-spread communication outage that took down both the primary and backup communications,” Butler said. The statement also said that the “outage affected multiple telecom/internet service providers and was much broader than the racing industry.” The TRA established a wagering integrity unit operated under the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau nearly two decades ago, in the wake of a scheme to fix the pick six wager for the 2002 Breeders’ Cup that was led by an employee of a tote company. Curtis Linnell, the head of the wagering integrity unit, acknowledged the request by Tampa Bay on Sunday morning but said he could not comment on the inquiry. “We’ve been requested by Tampa Bay Downs to conduct an inquiry to research the circumstances of the outage,” Linnell said. In most cases involving outages of the bet-processing system, the tote company is liable for business losses if they are found culpable. The Tampa Bay Derby was run after a 39-minute delay while the track waited to see if the tote system connection could be restored. On Sunday, Tampa decided to refund all win, place, show, exacta, trifecta, superfecta, and Super High 5 bets, along with the pick 4 that began two races earlier. However, the track also decided to pay out the daily double, pick 3, pick 4, pick 5, and pick 6 wagers ending with the Tampa Bay Derby with “all” in the last position. The refunds and the payouts were not posted to accounts until just before noon on Sunday. Tampa also announced on Sunday morning that admission would be free for today's card, which has a first post of 12:20 p.m. Eastern. Berube said that Tampa Bay handled $17.5 million on its Derby card last year. Handle on the races prior to the Derby this year was running at $13.5 million when the outage occurred. “I was certainly hoping we were getting to $17.5 million, if not more,” Berube said. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.