Are Horse Trainers Allowed To Bet? (Answered!)

Betting can be a strange world sometimes, and it’s the kind of thing which often inspires the sort of questions kids ask. ‘Can I do this? Can I do that? Can I bet on this? What if I bet on this?’

There are all sorts of questions about weird bets you could make, and though different bookmakers may have different rules, there’s usually a straight answer.

Recently while at his first horse race, my young son asked me if horse trainers could bet on their own horses.

So, I decided to look into it.

Are horse trainers allowed to bet?

Horse trainers are generally allowed to bet on their own horses, but they have to bet in their favor—a horse trainer can’t bet on their own horse to lose. Betting on your own horse to lose would certainly seem suspicious, but trainers can bet their own horse to win with the same rules.

So, there are no rules about what kind of bet a trainer could make on their own horse as long as they are betting in their favor.

So, let’s look a bit further into that.

Are horse trainers allowed to bet?

For any given horse in a race, there is going to be quite a few different people involved in its care for the race.

As the name implies, the horse trainer is the most hands on with the horse besides the jockey.

However, they aren’t directly involved with the race itself, and therefore they’re permitted to bet on the race, with the only caveat, as I mentioned, being they cannot lay the horse.

They must bet in its favor.

There is a rule which forbids jockeys from betting on a race they’re involved in full stop, whether on themselves or anyone in the race.

Trainers are not bound by this rule, since once the race has started, they don’t have any direct sway over the outcome.

Jockeys are directly involved in the race, and therefore forbidden to bet on the outcome.

However, laying your own horse to lose, whether you’re its jockey, its trainer, its owner or its agent, is against the rules.

As a trainer, this would certainly suggest that you don’t have faith in its chances to win, and thus, surely, no faith in yourself as a trainer.

Fixing bets is still not impossible, however, but preventing trainers from laying their own horse is a good way to curb a lot of potential bet fixing.

Can owners bet on their horses?

The same essential rules apply to owners.

They can bet on the race, the outcome, and they can bet on their own horse to win, but they can’t bet against it.

While owners often have a less hands on relationship with the actual racing, it still makes sense to apply these same rules to them.

So, unless you’re a jockey, it’s quite difficult to get into trouble as far as betting on a horse race. As long as you don’t have plans to bet against your horse and then instruct the jockey to throw the race, you aren’t breaking the rules.

There are still other rules you need to be aware of, though, like insider information.

What is insider information?

Trainers, as I said, are one of many individuals involved with the care of any racehorse.

As a trainer, you have the most hands on relationship with the horse and in many ways, you will know more about it than others.

One issue which is often raised in sports betting is what’s called insider information.

Inside information is a part of the sport, and everyone has some of it.

There’s no rule to forbid having insider information.

However, there are still instances where improperly sharing insider information can get you in trouble.

Again, it mostly comes down to laying horses.

Passing around information to others for use in lay bets, for example, can get you into trouble.

You may pick up pieces of information while engaging in races, and if you are carelessly talkative about it, you may end up passing on information which someone else uses to lay a horse unfairly.

Horse trainers can sometimes have access to some of the most sensitive information about horses, like their current state of health and how they’ve been performing.

Trainers often have to be more careful than others, then.

It’s mostly down to common sense and just remembering not to talk carelessly about details you’ve heard.

There can be a great deal of money involved in horse racing, so it’s understandably regulated quite strictly.

So, there are some basic, common-sense rules in place to prevent people from attempting to play the system.

Horse trainers can’t set up their own horse up to lose and then bet on that outcome—the bookmaker will certainly smell something suspicious in that.

They also cannot bet on any other horse in the race to win.

Essentially, if you want to bet on a race your own horse is in, you have essentially one outcome to bet on—either in your own horse’s favor, or against a different horse.

Other than that, horse trainers are subject to all the same rules as everyone else in a horse race.