Boscar Obarra Wrote:
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> What I saw is the horses on the inside came out
> at the same time Tourist came in SLIGHTLY.
>
> You guys need to watch with a more critical eye
> and stop wishing for half the races to have DQ
> tainted results.
>
> If you really watch the head on, you\'ll see it was
> King Kresa coming out at the start, causing
> everyone to bunch up.
I went back and watched the head on again.
Preliminary comment -- the head on is at a bad/strange angle, so it is possible that what one is seeing is distorted by the angle.
From the head on that I saw, the 7 (A Lot) came over to his left and moved into the 6 lane, the 8 (Tourist) came over across the empty 7 lane, crashed (or plowed if you prefer the chart caller terminology) into A Lot IN THE 6 lane and pushed A Lot into the 5 lane at which point he was met by resistance from the other horses having no place to go (and then squeezing back and losing time and space). At that point, Tourist had come over from the 8 lane to the 5 lane, I find unlikely to be relevant to the Stewards\' inquiry and the Jockey objection what was happening inside the 5 lane.
Secondary comment -- the gate was situated in such a way that they used only the outside six stalls in the starting gate. As far as I could tell, they located the gate so that the 1 gate lane was actually 3 path on the oval. If this race had had its full compliment of 9 horses, the gate would have had to have been situated in a completely different way. It seemed that since they only had 6 horses, they decided to use only the outside six stalls of the gate and then some Einstein decided the best location for the gate was as close to the outside rail as possible. While I can understand such gate placement/configuration in races that start on a turn (e.g. 10 furlongs at Belmont), it seems to me like a very weird gate placement for the race in question. I suspect there is some starting gate placement arcana that I am unaware of at play -- but as an uninformed viewer it seems possible that the gate placement could have encouraged the mayhem that followed. You could imagine that the 1 horse just wants to run a straight path....but in this case, that path is the 3 path....the outside horses, already further outside than they should have been in a 6 horse field want to save ground -- so the gate placement does appear to be a recipe for trouble, but again, I am no expert on gate placement, so maybe there are other considerations going on that are also important.
Now with all this -- the Stewards thought that there was some reason to call for an inquiry and the jockey on the 7 thought there was some reason to claim foul agains the 8. At that point, it seems to me the logical course would be for the Stewards to speak with all involved and watch the replays to see if the contact was SLIGHT or SIGNIFICANT. Now, I respect Boscar Obarra a lot. He says the contact was slight. The DRF chart caller (who, by the way, I think has been doing a great job this meet) did not think the contact was significant (hence mentioning the contact and using the word plow). So, it appears a question that could be reasonably open for debate.
Here is what I want to know -- how did the debate go? It seems clear contact happened and clear that it happened in a lane where the 8 could not be viewed as an innocent. The only question seems to me was how bad was the contact. From my view, it looked dangerous and like a horse could have fallen down. Maybe others disagree. Should the stewards have come out with a comment that although there was contact in a location where the 8 horse was the guilty party, the contact was not viewed as significant or dangerous? The issue cost me a lot of money, so I am obviously slanted here, but it seems to me there are some safety questions. Is it possible that Rosario could be at risk for a penalty for dangerous riding? If yes, then shouldn\'t the horse have come down? Is the guy on this board who said that standards are different for Bill Mott horses in Grade 1s right? I note that this horse had tried Grade 1 races 7 times previous to this one for Mott and failed in all 7. While I do not think that this is a relevant consideration, some people on this board think it was at play.
