You could have done something called (IIRC) an exacta box. For example, place a bet that horse 15 will win with horse 7 second AND a bet that horse 7 will win with horse 15 second. It costs twice the exacta but you'll never miss out by having your horses come in 2-1, thereby losing a big payout.
On a nice day, at a pretty track, it's fun for a few hours.
No it was 2 races back to back. You had to pick the 2 horses in order, I suppose you could have boxed them, but I didn’t. If you had a winning ticket on that one then your ticket on the 2nd race was marked that you had done so. If in the 2nd race you also correctly picked the 1st & 2nd place horses correctly you won the bid exacta or whatever it was called.. But you had to have had winning tickets in both races. I didn’t have the same 2 numbers for both races.