There's been a lot of whining about the Men's Cycling Road Race event today, with Betfair not listing the winner Alexander Vinokourov until the last few minutes of the race. With no "Any Other" selection listed, Betfair specifically stated in the rules that "others would be added on request". I guess not many people expected this to happen so late in the day and missed it, with only £7k out of a total just over £1million being matched on the winner. A small profit for the sharp mind who spotted this, and requested Vinokourov's addition, but there was not much money to be made. Fortunately lays were unaffected, including my lay of Mark Cavendish, but the ethics of adding a name at the death like this are questionable. Unlike the Next Manager markets where in theory, any one in the world could be a winner, and it is thus impossible for Betfair to include every possible winner, the winner in this road race was one of 145 competitors, and it shouldn't have been too hard for Betfair to list them all.
Betfair's Update: We created the Men’s Olympics Cycling Road Race market on 20th July from the official London 2012 website, which at that point did not show Alexandre Vinokourov as a listed competitor. The market remained ‘incomplete’ allowing us to add any further runners on request. We did not receive any requests for Vinokourov to be added, but when it became apparent that he was in a two-man breakaway group towards the latter stages of the race, we added him into the market (approximately 5km from the finish).
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