Question about Stewards.
 

There was an inquiry in the fifth race at Hollywood today. After the stewards came to a decision, Vic Stauffer not only made an anouncement about there being no change. He made what sounded like a statement that came from the stewards. In this case, they left the order of finish alone and gave a reason why. Do the stewards release some sort of statement for the public after every inquiry? Is it just a California thing, or are there other tracks that do this as well? I personally like it and wish they did it on the NY circuit. I would like to know what the stewards are seeing and thinking when they make some of these decisions. Something like this should be an industry wide standard.

to answer your next question....YES, the stewards in Cali are blind.

I know at Arlington, at least for the past bit -- when there is a disqualification, they've thrown the replay up on the big screen and gone over the reason for the DQ -- not sure what the machine is called, but the kind John Madden uses where they can draw big circles around the offender and arrows pointing to the horses involved.

Sorta nice.

Here's an example of what they do in HK.....

Scroll down for the incident report.....

http://www.hkjc.com/english/racing/r...eno=8&venue=HV

telestrator? (sp?)

Making information like this public could result in having a price put on your head by the likes of Equibase. I imagine the exec's there are losing sleep at the thought of giving out so much information for free. And it's being offered on a ENCRYPTED page that you can actually copy. GO FIGURE!!

By way of comparison to the extremely thorough race comments on the HKG site, we have the hit or miss chart comments offered by EQUIBASE. Not too many errors there. Yeah

Moreover, it's refreshing to see that thorough and intelligent stewards actually exist in the industry. There's actaully a logic to the exercise. It's hard enough to beat the game without having to deal with the arbitrary decisions of the U.S. stewards.

For example, even though the HOL stewards got it right in today's 5th, I didn't exactly get the sense that they're very competent. My reason for this is that, in watching the simulcast feed, they kept replaying the regular angle of the race --REPEATEDLY. Now, you couldn't see a thing from that angle ---either the 1st time or the 20th. Only at the end did they replay a rear shot a few times. Why not the HEADON, boys? Give us, and YOURSELVES, a clear look. Would go a long way towards establishing some credibility. Of course, this wouldn't work 'cause it would only go an extremely long way towards making the decision OBVIOUS to all by the clueless.

Wow! Thanks for posting that.

Sure, why not?

I still prefer The John Madden Pencil Machine, however.

Did you hear what their reason was for keeping him up today?

They said it was because he didnt cause the 2 horse a placing....which is bullsh*t. Even YOU could pass that hanging rat BLACK JACK coming down the lane. That sorry 2 for 34 hanging P.O.S.....

All I ask is that the stewards keep it consistent. If the 2 won the race and the 6 had the interference called, you would be applauding the call.

And I could not have passed.

the reasoning they gave for keeping the 6 up is bullsh*t...plain and simple.

A trained monkey could see that the 6 interfered with the 2 horse...clearing costing him a placing. The fact that he ran on and held of for 3rd tells you how much horse that Blanc had.

I thought the stewards made the correct call. I did not think Billy Allen was cost a chance at a better placing. That's always tough to quantify but I would have voted the same way. JMO

THANK YOU!!! Are you satisfied now Kev, the friggin race caller says it was legit.


And GPK, I know you are sleeping right now but I just watched the head-on three times and he barely nudged him, if they were to call that crap every single time, we would be getting DQ's every race. If Blanc would have got him into the hole and he came over like that and hit half of the horses body then I'll side with you but Blanc was going for a closing hole and tried a sell job....

Work with me here, Kev would have fallen for that 'out' if he didn't get a sidekick

The race caller looked at the head on and other views about 22 times before forming an opinion.

Well that's the Daily Double. I don't undertsand either one of your posts.