A (Stalinist) day at the races

Is there such a thing as ethical gambling?

I never thought so until I read this headline  - 'Stalin' prepares runners for Melbourne Cup.

The single quotes let you know it's not the real Stalin, he's been dead for a while now, but someone judged just as nasty - even nastier than the more-recently dead horse-racing fanatic Kerry Packer.

The man  with the golden gun and holding the phallic microphone pictured in this follow-up story is Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov and he has a horse running in the Melbourne Cup called Mourilyan.

According to Leonid Petrov, who is referred to as an "Australian National University academic", if Mourilyan wins, the Victorian Racing Club could be complicit in global financial crimes.

"[If Mourilyan wins] it will become quite questionable whether the Melbourne Cup is participating in an international money laundering scheme," Petrov said.

Maybe we need this level of political analysis for each horse and its connections rather than the regular equine stuff like bloodlines and form in the wet.

There's always been something whiffy about racing at this level and it's not just the horse-shit.

The real business of horse-racing, of course, is to fleece punters and the TAB has concocted evermore sophisticated ways of draining cash from the hopeful this season.

Among these 'special' fixed odd deals, for example, is an option to bet on the "tote price of winner". This is like a punting derivative, a CDO gone trackside. And I thought financial engineering was out of fashion.

Despite these misgivings I will be gambling on the Melbourne Cup but not on anything exotic like the age or sex of the winning horse - I'll be sticking to a vanilla win bet.

Mourilyan is out, of course, and what's the story with Alcopop?

 

David Chaplin

 

Pictured: Tony Wags, right, and Mark Gladstone cheer on their horse during last year's Melbourne Cup at a Tauranga bar. Photo / Bay of Plenty Times.