Look, anytime you put up ridiculously high purses for any state breds, guys are gonna be trying like hell to win.
The La-bred purses in MSW's this year appear to be 42,500 bucks.
This means the winning owner gets 60% of that with a winning horse, which is 25,500 bucks!!!!! Even after he pays the jock and trainer there 10% of that, which is 2550 to each, the owner still clears 20,400 bucks. The 2550 to the owner and jockey ain't too shabby either.
Higher purses are great for the bettor even if don't most realize it. The more money the players are going after, the harder they try.
So many players are leery of chicanery, and rightly so. But when you give the players more incentive to try and get paid by winning, you eliminate many facets of chicanery.
Chicanery most often stems(lets take harness races as an example) from the players having more incetive to cash a bet than take what they can rightfully earn.
If you are a jock or trainer or owner and looking at a big payday for winning a race, you don't care about cashing a bet, you just wanna win the damn race.
Opening day purses at the FG are 352,000 total, which is an average of 35,200 per race.
Anybody wanna bet that Gulf's opening day average purse per race is less?