How did a 110-1 long-shot win her horse race?

So, how do you get a winless filly listed as a 110-1 long-shot to win her horse race?  Simple…have a different horse run under her name.  That’s apparently what happen in Ohio at Hollywood Gaming’s Mahoning Valley Race Course near Youngstown.  In what is being ruled as a legitimate mix-up, a stable worker brought the wrong horse out for the race in early November, and another employee failed to properly check the horse before it ran.  After an investigation, the state’s racing commissioner deemed there was no foul play involved, and that the mix-up was purely unintentional. I’ve saved the best detail for last: the horse that ran in the race was a male!!  Someone had their financial prayers answered, because the mistake wasn’t discovered until after the male horse won by eight lengths, and all the bets had been paid out.

Now folks, there are a couple of things horses are best known for.  These include “long faces” (click here for the classic horse joke) and long, ha hemm…”you know whats.”  There’s a great horse joke regarding that matter, but darn it, this is a kid friendly website….none of that here.  Anyway, the point I’m getting at is, how do you miss this distinguishing feature on a horse?  Granted, horses aren’t always shall we say, “flaunting” their endowedness (that only happens at certain times), but it’s still easy enough to distinguish a male horse from a filly using a simple, age old, fail proof technique called “spot the private part.”  It works every time!  In this case, if it was a legitimate mistake, obviously no one bothered to check.  Unless the horse was whisked right from his stable to the starting gate, at lightening fast speed, it’s hard to imagine no one had the opportunity to spot the error.  We have to assume the stable hand was unfamiliar with the horse (or really hung-over from the night before) and the second employee was either lazy or not doing his job outright.  It’s interesting how they were both so unfamiliar with the markings of the two different horses under their care (private parts aren’t the only way to tell horses apart you know 🙂  We don’t know the whereabouts of the owner when this incident occurred, but we would have to assume he wasn’t present or else the story would be even more suspicious in terms of “how did HE not notice?”

In the end, I guess the commissioner must have reasoned to himself, “who would have the guts to intentionally try the old switcheroo?  And if someone were to try and pull of the old switcheroo trick, surely they would just use a different, faster, filly rather than a male horse right?”  Yea, we’ll buy that logic too.  Unless of course they found a perfect match to their 110-1 long shot in terms of identical color and markings (minus the penis) and just decided to go for it???  Nah….the Ohio commissioner’s ruling stands in our books too….”no intentional wrongdoing.”