Race horses a target in Hong Kong? (Terrorism?)

International Herald Tribune ^ | March 26, 2007 | Keith Bradsher

[RDTF]

HONG KONG: It was a device worthy of Rube Goldberg or Wile E. Coyote: a dozen remote-controlled launching tubes secretly buried in the turf at Hong Kong's most famous horse race track last week, armed with compressed air to fire tiny, liquid-filled darts into the bellies of horses at the starting gate.

No horses were hurt, because the track supervisor noticed something underfoot before racing started, discovered the elaborate mechanism concealed by grass-colored tape and called in a police bomb squad to remove it.

But the discovery of the device, equipped with elaborate electronic controls, has raised concerns about security during the six Olympic equestrian events to be held in Hong Kong next year.

Few security experts expect a terrorist incident during the 2008 Olympics. But Hong Kong is a far more open, less-controlled city than Beijing, where most of the Olympic events will be held.

The equestrian events will not be held at the 162-year-old Happy Valley Racecourse, where the mysterious device was found, but at Hong Kong's other race track, in Sha Tin, just north of the Kowloon Peninsula.

[RDTF]

ping

[lafroste]

It sounds like an elaborate scheme to cheat. All horses but one are shot with some mild debilitant that would wear off quickly would be my guess.

[sarasmom]

Is PETA active in Hong Cong?

[RDTF]

probably, but opens the door to scary possibilities. Terrorists are always thinking, planning and testing.

[tsmith130]

I just saw this on Fox. The Chinese don't take kindly to messing with their horseracing.

[CometBaby]

I've been to this track .. it is awesomely beautiful. The day I was there, we were too early for racing so we had lunch in the Jockey Club. People in HK take their horse racing extremely seriously. There are many thousands at that track. This had to be big news in Hong Kong.

[silverleaf]

gambling is big business for the Chinese- my guess would be Chinese mafia (whatever name they go by) or other parties looking for the big fix...not terrorists

[nw_arizona_granny]

Ping

[GOP_1900AD]

Triads trying to sway race outcomes?

[Fairview]

I saw this in the NYTimes yesterday. The whole thing makes no sense. If the dart contained a stimulant and it hit a horse that the gamblers wanted to win, that would be foolish because the winners are always drug-tested. If the dart contained some agent intended to slow down horses the gamblers did not wish to win, how could they aim for the appropriate animals in the wild melee that is the start of a race? It's totally unpredictable. The chances of actually striking the correct horse are close to zero. And of course, in the event that a favorite lost and looked woozy, he would also have some blood pulled and his urine tested.

[oldenuff2no]

If you targeted the horses while they were in the starting gate and had the ability to chose which horses to slow down then the race could be fixed and the winner would never test positive for drugs.

[Fairview]

The thing is, there's no advantage to targeting horses to lose unless they're among the favorites. If two or three horses with the best odds stumble across the finish in tenth place, they will certainly be tested.

[oldenuff2no]

The handicappers in Hong Kong have a different world to work in than anywhere else in the world. Horses coming into the country have to clear quarantine which is a slow and expensive process. There are a finite number of race horses on that island and the people who do the math have all the stats on every one of them. The second part of this is that there are not very many places for them to run so they know exactly how each horse runs on that particular track.
It's all a matter of changing the odds to be big in their favor not about a sure thing.
If you can slow down three of the better horses in a ten horse race with drugs and then drop the worst three horses out of you mathematical calculations you can alter the outcome 100% of the time. You would be dropping over 80% of the possible winning combinations. If you had several shills betting the different win show and place bids at 100 to 1 you could clean house. Not every time but a lot of the time. That would change the odds in a huge way.

[Velveeta]

Well, this is a weird one, Granny.
I wonder what type of poison was in the darts?

[elli1]

Interesting, informative post!

[nw_arizona_granny]

I don't have a clue to what the poison was, but can imagine seeing this in use again and not always on horses.

[oldenuff2no]

It doesn't even have to be a poison. It can be just a fast acting drug that slightly inhibits the oxygenation process of the blood. It needs to go to work instantly and stop working in less than three minutes.
Who ever figured this one out was pretty bright with a big knowledge of both drugs and electronics. The instant I read the article I saw how it worked but I have never heard of this scam before. They usually only test the winning horses. Unless the handicappers they were using were idiots it could have continued undetected for a long time. I would guess they were using computers to figure the new odds. They got caught because whoever set up the hardware got careless. I'll bet the hands on guys that buried the delivery system weren't the ones with the brains in this operation.

[nw_arizona_granny]

A system like that, could shoot blank needles, if the horse got hit with one, it would be like a snake bite and they would react.

Not a good invention and one we did not need, for the horses or for humans.