It's one of our hobby horses - the unneccessary situation arising from a lack of customer information about scratched horses and promoted reserves. While this hobby horse has a poor win record at the Jockey Club, it is nevertheless still out there trying and got another start at Sha Tin on Sunday.
Wah Yan Fortune might have been one of the fancied runners in the fourth race had he not been scratched, but it is doubtful that the people who made his replacement, Bountiful, a favourite felt the same way about that horse. Yet there he was carrying enough cash to make him a 4.2 chance in the second Triple Trio and first Double Trio leg. Naturally, Bountiful - a.k.a. race four number seven - ran as a 40-1 chance and ran accordingly. But, for the day when one wins, we'd just like to say now that the result is not the point.
It is unknown whether punters who realised they were not backing Wah Yan Fortune returned to cancel their bets, but we are still asking why this situation happens at all. In the greater scheme of betting pools, the number of tickets and dollars involved is small - so it should not be much trouble to fix. It's called customer service.
Henry Chan, the Club's director of betting, says there is a recorded information service listing scratchings and replacements at the end of calls to telephone betting and callers should listen then call back if they want to change bets. We aren't that bright, we know, but we don't fully understand why this brief but important information is not at the beginning of the call - it isn't as though meetings ever feature more than one or two withdrawals.
The Jockey Club denies the possibility, but we hear reports that punters using off-track betting shops often don't find any indication of withdrawals on the field lists in early betting. This column has suggested a computer-generated signal to OTB operators or self-service terminal users to ensure knowledge of the promoted horse and is sticking with this solution, but punters may decide they are better off not betting early at all.