Master Veitch in RP today

From "enemy number one" of the bookmakers to the best friend of syndicate owners; that's the transition Patrick Veitch is trying to make. Perhaps it's a shade premature to suggest that he's mellowing but the geeky ferocity with which he applied himself to extracting fortunes from Ladbrokes, Hills and the rest has now seemingly morphed into something more benevolent as he seeks to spread his racing interests beyond the single-minded realm of the punter.

Veitch has been involved from the start with the mass-ownership venture Raceshare and has committed to sourcing their equine talent until at least 2030. He describes himself as the largest shareholder in the business. An especially satisfying result came at the Ebor meeting, when Treasure Time carried the black, white and gold silks of Raceshare to victory in a big-field handicap worth £52,000 to the winner.

A three-figure number of owners were present, all naturally thrilled by their horse's late surge to glory under one of the weighing room's most charismatic figures, Tom Marquand, at one of the sport's finest venues. Veitch was present to witness their delight and found the experience very much to his liking.

"It was kind of a Shawshank Redemption moment for me," he says, expecting the reference to be immediately understood. Alas, he's been saddled with an interviewer who hasn't seen the much-lauded movie or read Stephen King's book, so he elaborates.

"The main character does a massive favour for a key prison officer and in return he requests that on a hot, outdoor working day, his workmates be brought a crate of beer. And then he declines a beer himself because he's happy to sit there and enjoy the moment of the pleasure he's brought."

Patrick Veitch's 'Shawshank Redemption moment' after Treasure Time wins at the Ebor meeting
Patrick Veitch's 'Shawshank Redemption moment' after Treasure Time wins at the Ebor meeting
Credit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)
Robin Hood might have been the obvious comparison for a hugely successful punter now enjoying the use of his wealth to spread happiness. But Veitch evidently prefers Andy Dufresne, whose background was as a successful banker, and perhaps that's a natural fit for someone who studied maths at Cambridge and has since crafted his own algorithms as a means of identifying value in the betting market and also the sales ring.

Betting was how he made his name, his 2009 autobiography describing him as "the UK's most feared professional punter", and the reputation for mental acuity he built in those days has proved durable. Making money from horses has been his life's work, going all the way back to his days as an underage gambler.

"My first experience was that we had a half-day off at school and the coach taking me back didn't go for a couple of hours. So I found a betting shop, saw odds and numbers and money changing hands and thought, 'I should give this a go'. After the driving test, I was straight to the races."

This was in the era when betting shop frontages had to hide everything that was going on indoors and many of us were tempted in by the very fact that they were obviously not respectable places to be. For Veitch, that was no part of the attraction.

"No, I just wanted to bet. I didn't have that, 'Oh, it's smoky and it's glamorous in a Soho way.' I enjoyed playing pontoon and things on the coach to school, so the opportunity to do this properly was very interesting."

Treasure Time's success came just after the 20th anniversary of Veitch's greatest hit, when Exponential won a Nottingham maiden after a late deluge of money took his odds from 100-1 to 8-1. He'd finished last on his only previous start. When the Racing Post ran a series on racing's greatest gambles, Exponential was ranked eighth.

I wonder aloud if eighth was really high enough but Veitch is long past the stage of allowing himself to rise to such obvious bait. Sitting in front of a large computer screen on which he has been plotting potential purchases, he smiles at the memory and is obviously proud of it but exhibits no competitiveness about its place in history.

"Other gambles have certainly won more in liquid markets," he muses. "But just on the sub-point of organisational late execution, I think he was still 100-1 when they were at the post – it was hopefully quite well planned.

"No rules were broken. He ran first time when the stable was badly out of form, which was there to be calculated."

Even so, there is no triumphalism in his description of that pivotal moment. Instead, he gives a sense that such goings-on, while valid at the time, might belong in the past.

"When I got into sport, the landing of a gamble was something where the coverage was 95 per cent positive. It was seen as almost entirely positive by the racing industry at the time. Things have changed now.

"The punter has higher expectations of the available data and people see their position in society, rightly, differently now. To some extent the punter accepted how things were. Now, they have more of a voice.

"I will happily defend the fact that I landed gambles, because I didn't break the rules, but I still think that, in the modern day, that is not helpful to our sport. We have a different set of punters with different values now."

Patrick Veitch in the surroundings that have been part of his life for many years
Patrick Veitch in the surroundings that have been part of his life for many years
Veitch is much less involved in betting on British racing these days, for a variety of reasons which should be of interest and concern to the sport's ruling body. It will surprise nobody that the difficulty of 'getting on' is a key issue.

"The exchanges' turnover seems to be down by around two-thirds on day-to-day British horse racing. That's less of a factor with the bookmakers but obviously, due to restrictions, the ability to get bets on with UK bookmakers has become not worth the bother.

"Other people have internationalised these skills. I decided some years ago that I didn't want to bother with that, I wanted to enjoy life. But now it's become essential.

"Increasingly in recent years, I've been using algorithms because there's been so much British racing and relatively low liquidity that it hasn't been worth it to intricately study the videos to find a horse that you can't get much on anyway."

On the subject of affordability checks, he says punters of his acquaintance have been "tearing their hair out" about the impact on their ability to bet. He says there is a need for clarity from the Gambling Commission but also points a finger at bookmakers who "have seemed to want to mess customers about after they've won".

"It's not entirely a one-way street. There are also punters whose expectations from a bookmaker are unrealistic."

He blames what he describes as "the bloated fixture list" for a long-term decline in turnover; it's a turn-off, he thinks, for punters who would otherwise be enthusiasts. "For the good of racing, I hope those who have used flawed data analysis to create this situation will eventually see sense.

"All in all, it makes sense for me to make a change when the liquidity is so much greater in Hong Kong." Having done so well from British racing for so long, Veitch is switching his attention to the version of the sport that takes place in a region 6,000 miles away. Huge turnover is one lure. Fewer than 100 racedays each year is another.

"I've become aware that others are playing for much larger stakes internationally. My margins are very good but turnover's gone way down, so the appeal of that huge international turnover has reached a tipping point."

A spectacular view of Happy Valley as Rachel King makes a dream debut with victory on Oversubscribed (centre) in the first leg of the International Jockeys' Championship
A spectacular view of Happy Valley in Hong Kong
Credit: Edward Whitaker
As a newspaper tipster, this writer spent some time trying to get to grips with Hong Kong racing in the Covid spring of 2020, when the sport in northern Europe had been halted. It was a reliable source of thrills but also of frustration, its two tight tracks ensuring that luck plays a part in many outcomes. Veitch isn't worried.

"As betting's got more sophisticated in recent years, it's less about sculpting the perfect bet, it's more about understanding the probability of everything," he explains. "It's not about, can you be sure of horse number four in the third race? You might be looking at a collection of exotic bets which include the fourth, fifth and sixth most interesting horses in the race.

"Obviously, there are some very sophisticated operators out there, so I'm not underestimating the challenge, but I've got an advantage in that, as well as having the algorithmic side that I've used in recent years, I've got that skill set from earlier years, just watching the videos and backing myself to hopefully interpret some races better.

"I haven't actually started punting yet. I'm laying the groundwork very carefully because I know my opposition is strong. But when I first sit down, possibly in the new year, I'll start studying the videos in earnest and it will be an exciting moment to get back to that challenge. I know the races develop differently but hopefully I will adapt to that."

Part of the attraction is Hong Kong's strict regulatory regime. Veitch describes Britain as "lax" by comparison.

"Racing people don't seem to understand how many punters think," he says, referring in particular to jockeys failing to ride out to the line once it has become clear they won't win.

"While those rides often are perfectly explicable by the circumstances of the horse, that sort of thing isn't allowed in Hong Kong.

"If I could give the BHA and horsemen a measurement of just how many customers that has cost us in the last 20 years, they would be horrified. I can't prove it but, because I've needed to talk to a lot of punters to get assistance in getting my bets on, I can't tell you how big that factor is.

"No-one has ever demanded that you use a whip on a lightly raced horse. You want firm hand-riding. If a horse isn't ready for that in a sport that is heavily supported by punters, it shouldn't be racing.

"One of the difficulties is that the rules have tended to be written under headings like 'running horses on their merits'. When a trainer or a jockey gets pulled up over this, it tends to come with the stigma of a non-trier.

"Instead, I've suggested, to no avail at this stage, that there should be a lesser penalty that is saying, 'We're not in any way saying this horse wasn't a trier but we wanted to see more. In the same way as we will hold an inquiry if your rider is too forceful, equally if your ride is not forceful enough, then, to satisfy those watching that the result was fair, we wanted to see more.'"

Veitch's betting on British racing might have been toned down but his interest remains, including through Raceshare, where he wants high standards to be a selling point.

"We've made it clear to stables that if they want the horse, they have to be seriously helping us out by making sure with photos, videos and news that the owner feels fully informed.

"The principle is that, by having a team to organise it, a Raceshare owner should be better informed than a person who owns a single horse, because there is the time and the commitment to getting them that information."

Veitch also has a healthy breeding operation these days.

"I discovered quite a few years ago that the algorithms I'd developed for betting were also going to be very useful in the bloodstock markets," he says.

"When Lope De Vega had been going as a stallion for a couple of years, he was shining so high on my analytics that I invested heavily in him, in yearlings by him and mares sent to him. As his fee has risen from €50,000 to €125,000, that's worked out nicely and it'll be €175,000 next year. Of course, we all remember our winners."

Patrick Veitch (right) with Michael Tabor (left) and Ralph Beckett (centre) at Tattersalls last month
Patrick Veitch (right) with Michael Tabor (left) and Ralph Beckett (centre) at Tattersalls last month
Credit: Edward Whitaker
Veitch is also buying yearlings for the ownership pair of Tony Bloom and Ian McAleavy, having first met them three years ago.

"We've had some good fortune so far," he says, alluding to Lake Forest, who was second in the Commonwealth Cup and recently won Australia's Golden Eagle, landing £2.8 million in prize-money and putting a dazzling gloss on the early success of this particular team, although Veitch warns: "They've only raced about a dozen horses so far. I'm sure there are going to be trickier patches along the way."

Bloom is also known to be a heavy-hitting punter and doubtless there are a few bookies wincing at the idea of the two men joining forces. Do they compare notes on betting?

"There's a general understanding about racing that we don't delve into each other's techniques," Veitch says. "But I think they knew enough from talking to me that there was enough similarity, they knew I was doing things in a way they would respect.

"Obviously, we talk plenty about their runners, mostly myself and Ian. They have their own racing operation as well, so we tend not to talk in detail about our techniques. I suppose both sides would recognise it's best not to give your edges away."

Breeding, buying and betting; that's enough to keep anyone occupied.

"The long-term objective would be that anything betting-wise will be getting towards being automated.

"I'll never leave horse racing but the objective is to be where my sole priority in Goodwood week is to drive down there and enjoy watching the horses I've bred or chosen at the sales or have some other relationship with."

When his future looks like that, anyone would want to be Patrick Veitch. So what advice would he give to a young follower of racing, just making their initial forays into betting? There is a 17-second pause while he thinks it over.

"Provided you're not someone who needs to play for very high stakes, the value is probably swinging back round to a very good video analyst. Because the data crunchers are heavily affecting the market.

"Studying the form with a few clicks, you're going to struggle to beat them. But if you can make yourself a good enough video analyst, you will spot things that those programmes won't.

"You need to have your own opinion. And that doesn't work by simply taking the opinion of a form organisation – that will have been fed into those computers.

"You need to develop your eye. You listen, you watch. Dare I say it, you take a share in a horse, you learn the business and you get to the point where you can form your own opinion and take on the market."

How hard can that be?