Mattress Mack has a few ideas on how to fix horse racing

"After a while, you say that's enough."

Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale is leaving the racing business because of what he sees as a lack of integrity in the sport, as BloodHorse reported Monday.

Horse Racing Nation caught up with McIngvale on Tuesday, and he expanded on what he sees as the main problems in the industry.

"Number one, I can make more money gambling on other sports," he said. "The deal where they bet offshore and it comes in and changes the odds at the last minute, that really sucks."

The second problem, he said, is that "I can't beat the cheaters and the veterinarians drugging and injecting these horses. So I'm not going to impugn my integrity to win a horse race. And we ran on hay, oats and water for however long I was in it, probably 30 years. And it just got to the point where we weren't competitive and it was time to get out."

McIngvale believes the way to address computer wagering is to have fixed odds. "That would be effective if they could pull that off because you want to know what you're getting on the horse. I mean, the other day I bet on my boy Bud Crawford against Canelo, and I got plus 140. I think it went off at plus 150, but at least I had the plus 140. I think they can attract a lot more gamblers if they have fixed odds."

MacIngvale believes the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority isn't the answer to racing's problems. "I think HISA means well, but they're totally ineffective, impotent. I think the veterinarians shouldn't run horse racing. It ought to be run by people that love these animals. And having those veterinarians come out there and the trainer tells them what to inject them with, they go inject them, I think that's total bullshit. And it kills the bettors. You can't make any money. If bettors can't make any money, they ain't going to be out there forever. Gamblers got to make money.

"Gamblers have got to at least have a fighting chance," he continued. "I mean, I won a lot of money gambling in my life and I damn sure didn't win at the horse races. That's the revenue stream for horse races, gamblers. When was the last time they thought about the gamblers? They don't think about the gamblers, they think about the owners and the bloodstock agents who are making all the money on these sales, a lot of which are fraudulent, and these vets are all driving these brand new trucks. Well, who's paying for that? The gamblers are."

So what did he think of the record-breaking yearlings sale at Keeneland this month?

"Ask them five years from now, how many of them came out? Ask them 5 years from now, how many of them made a profit on the deal?

"I mean horse racing is a great game, it's got a lot of glamour, it's got a lot of this, it's got a lot of that. It's also the dirtiest game there is. Why get in it if you're playing by the rules? They all know that XYZ trainer and XYZ has got this wired. Come on. And then when they have a good horse, the other horses won't run against them. You got to have full fields, so you've got some betting, betting action. You got to have full fields. Otherwise there's no gamble to it. You’ve got to get some overlays."

MacIngvale is in the process of selling his last horse, the 2015 champion sprinter Runhappy. So why now?

“I got better things to do with my life to bang my head up against this wall," he said. "We had a lot of fun. There's a lot of great people in horse racing, but HISA was going to come in like the knight in shining armor and clean it all up. How'd that work?”