Racing: Double exposure for Hills

IT WOULD be interesting to know what the marketing department of William Hill estimated to be the likely downside of the firm's decision to give away pounds 1.8m in free bets last month. Not much, you suspect, since the bets in question - 90,000 of them, distributed to disappointed applicants for shares in Hills' abortive flotation - could be placed only as pounds 20 win doubles on the Lincoln and the Grand National. But after the victory of Right Wing in Saturday's opening leg, the people who dreamed it up might yet find that they have come up with the most expensive publicity wheeze since Hoover decided to offer free flights.

So far, the figures are these. When the flotation was scrapped a few weeks ago, 90,000 applicants were left without the shares they had registered to buy. All received the free pounds 20 bet on the Spring Double, and about 10,000 managed to find the Lincoln winner, either by specifying Right Wing by name, or by asking for the bet to ride on "the favourite". Since bets will only be settled at starting price, and Right Wing's SP was 9- 2, these lucky punters now have a free pounds 110 bet running on to the National, which is a grand total of about pounds 1.1m.

Again, many have specified the unnamed favourite for the second leg of the bet. With less than two weeks to go to the race, this seems likely to be Double Thriller, whose name suddenly begins to seem strangely appropriate. Hills' early estimate is that a quarter of all the running-on money will attach itself to Paul Nicholls's chaser, who finished fourth in the Gold Cup at Cheltenham. If he is successful, at odds of, say, 4-1, they will stand to pay out around pounds 1.3m.

Not surprisingly, this potential liability has rather skewed William Hill's ante-post book, and they now go 7-2 against Double Thriller when 5-1 is available elsewhere. This ensures that they will not add to their potential losses in the run-up to the race on Saturday week, which is reasonable enough. It is disappointing, though, to find that there is little value further down their list to make up for the short price about the favourite. They are top-priced about just one of the first nine horses in the betting, while Stanley, by contrast, manage to offer the clear or joint-best odds about six of the same entries.

Still, the knowledge of Hills' big liability should make for some interesting trading in the ring on National day. The on-course bookies have no such worries, and are more than bright enough to work out that every extra half-point on Double Thriller's starting price will stand to cost Hills about pounds 125,000. The firm will need to feed money to the course to keep the favourite's price down, just as they did at Doncaster on Saturday, when Hills sent pounds 16,000 into the ring to shorten up Right Wing, and another pounds 10,000 to do the same to Captain Scott, the runner-up. At such a short price about a horse with no National experience, in a field of 30 or more runners, the ring will accommodate them all day.

At Hills' head office, though, panic has yet to set in. "If you're going to have big liabilities, this is the race to have big liabilities in," Graham Sharpe, the firm's spokesman, said yesterday. "You can make a book around the situation, and it's not as if we're not taking anything for anything else. You don't put pounds 1.8m of free bets into the market without being aware that you stand to acquire a substantial liability if a fancied horse wins the first leg, but it's an opportunity to introduce a large number of novice punters to our business, and even the 80,000 that backed losers on Saturday had a lot of fun."

Of course, even if Double Thriller does win the National and Hills pay out pounds 1m or so, they will receive a fair slice back from their hedging bets, while the publicity for the firm in the run-up to the biggest betting race of the year is also priceless.

They also have a friend in a high place, the Patron Saint of Bookmakers, who always seems to sort out a means of salvation for his flock when they are facing a difficult situation. Then again, this time he may decide that if a bookmaking firm hands out 90,000 free bets, that's their problem.

RICHARD EDMONDSON

Nap: Souperficial

(Newcastle 3.20)

NB: Count Karmuski

(Newcastle 3.55)