You’d struggle to design a better platform. No
other sport is so relentlessly, plausibly unpredictable.
Are you familiar with The Dogs? Do you have The
Dogs in Australia and/or America? Maybe you do and maybe it’s the
same as our The Dogs, but maybe not.
The Dogs is dog racing. The Dogs is men with hard, lined faces
and harder-to-understand dialects. The Dogs is a dilapidated
stadium beside an industrial estate on the periphery of a city. The
Dogs is Portakabins selling burgers and imitation tomato ketchup.
The Dogs is sheepskin jackets, flat caps and wads of cash. The Dogs
is gambling on animals running circles round sandy tracks. The Dogs
is where the common man goes when he doesn’t have a nice enough hat
or a double-barrelled surname to wear to the horses.
Chas Smith would probably go to the horses, but would call
himself Charlie that day. The dogs is for men like Nick Carroll.
Men with gruff voices, thick fingers, and questionable internet
browsing history. Longtom might also go to the dogs, just to make
sure Doherty wasn’t in bed with any of them.
So you get The Dogs.
The Dogs is also an almighty fucking con.
I know this to be true because I went to The Dogs once. It was a
little like Chas stooping to listen to The People, except that I am
The People. Sort of. I actually occupy a sort of chameleon
hinterland.
Anyway, I went once with a friend whose father was very well
known. (He worked in crime. Committing, not combating).
Shortly after we arrived a man with a shaved head and wearing a
leather jacket sidled up beside my friend, tapped him on the
shoulder and hushed cryptically in his ear: “Number 6. From your
dad. Keep it quiet” before vanishing into the crowd.
Number 6, it turned out, was a scrawny, desperate looking
greyhound that was slavering and sweating in the trap below us,
waiting to start the next race. To the punters, Number 6 merely
represented a number on an animated, living roulette wheel. To us,
Number 6 was the dog seemingly predetermined to win the next
race.
And so it was.
My friend hadn’t expected this tip. He was taken aback as we
were. He hadn’t even told his father we would be there. His old man
always seemed to know things. None of us questioned it at the time
or since. None of us fancied wearing concrete boots at the bottom
of the river.
I’ve always been fond of a punt. Before I became persona
non-grata with most of the bookies (another story) I gambled, in
earnest, on surfing. Lots of times I’ve felt the same as I did that
day at The Dogs. That it was all rigged and I wasn’t part of
it.
And The Dogs isn’t exactly an outlier. There is controversy
related to suspicious betting patterns in almost every sport, at
every level.
Surfing might not be rigged.
But if it isn’t I’d ask two questions. Why not? And how long
before it is? It’s tailor-made for match-fixing and gambling
corruption. You’d struggle to design a better platform. I can’t
think of another activity so relentlessly, plausibly
unpredictable.
Surfing is not bound by the rigidity of finish lines or the
integrity of stopwatches or goal line technology. It’s merely
subjective. It would seem monumentally foolish to gamble on the
outcome of something subject to the opinions of strangers, or the
mercy of the weather, or the whims of Richie Portly.
And none of the controversy over shocking decisions ever amounts
to anything, does it? No-one is ever held accountable. No-one is
ever moderated. Sure, there’ll be a bit of internet furore, but it
soon drifts away, free of repercussion.
Determining the winner of a surf competition is considerably
more arbitrary than determining if one dog can run faster than
another. It’s much easier to manufacture a desired outcome and make
it look genuine.
Surfing is not bound by the rigidity of finish lines or the
integrity of stopwatches or goal line technology. It’s merely
subjective. It would seem monumentally foolish to gamble on the
outcome of something subject to the opinions of strangers, or the
mercy of the weather, or the whims of Richie Portly.
A much easier way to profit from pro surfing is simply the
willing (or unwilling) cooperation of someone involved. For the
most part that’s one human being. One low-to-mid-tier surfer who
can make a shit lot more cash by not catching waves rather than
catching them. It might be late into a season, they might be backed
up on the QS, on course for mid-table obscurity. What do they have
to lose?
Who cares about another 25th place when you can compensate with
enough illicit cash to feed your family or fund another campaign?
All for simply throwing a heat and shouldering a little guilt.
Perhaps you don’t even need to be coerced, perhaps you just bet on
yourself to lose.
Think of the alibis!
I didn’t think it was going to be a good one…the wind wasn’t
right…I didn’t hear the score…I fell off…I just didn’t get the best
waves…the foam ball got me…he/she just surfed better…
A surfer might reasonably convince himself that he didn’t throw
the heat on purpose. Memories of surf rarely reflect reality. The
permutations of how to throw a heat and make it look (or perhaps
even feel) completely plausible are endless.
Surfing and gambling are a match rigged in heaven. It’s only a
matter of time until it goes to the dogs.
