The California judges normally leave up the winner if it doesnt affect the outcome. Unfortunately, in my opinion, they\'re not looking for gameness/herding/hanging and they\'re solely looking at margin of victory. Because the margin was small, they made the DQ even though the winner was digging in and not letting that other horse go by.
Also, the other horse really had the entire stretch to surge past and didnt want to or wasnt good enough.
With 70 yards to go, if you had the 2nd place finisher, you had to be thinking \"i hope the leader comes out and bumps me because it doesnt appear that i\'m going by on my own\"
The outside horse was under the left handed whip early in the lane and drifted away from the leader and there was a bigger gap in midstretch, but the outside horse came in a lane or two under the right handed whip and \'tightened it up\' on the leader and that\'s when the bumping took place.
The physical 2nd place finisher did not keep a perfectly straight path, the jock let him come in a lane or two to \'engage\' with the leader and when you do that and the horses are very close together, sometimes there is contact.
I would have left up the winner on the grounds that not only did it probably not cost the 2PF a board placing, but the 2nd place rider did not perservere thru the wire and try to win. Once he got bumped, he \'gave up\' and hand rode to the wire and started to stand up before they hit the line. I dont want to reward a chicken ride like that, if the jock would have got more aggressive late in the stretch and tried to still win, i might have been more apt to reward him. Not as apt to reward him for stopping riding his mount and hoping the judges get him the win, no excuse for the 2nd place jock to stop riding.
I dont think it was the worst decision that the So Cal stewards have made in recent times, but it wasnt the best either...i leave up the winner if it was me.
