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Originally Posted by philcski
Just watched the replay, the jockey on GW did a terrible job. He was riding him hard halfway through the race and even though he was hopelessly out of it he continued to push him. I'm not advocating pulling a horse up unnecessarily but that was ridiculous. The horse was obviously spinning his wheels, not handling the track.
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this is exactly my thinking, and I don't hear many people or commentators talking about it. When you watch the replay, as soon as they show the field on the backstretch you see Kinane urgently scrubbing on the neck of GW, agressively pushing him on, seemingly with no reaction. in fact, shortly after that Curlin and Street Sense go by him like he was standing still.
Then on through the final turn every horse had passed him save for one, Diamond Stripes who was also hopelessly out of it at that point. As they enter the turn Denman days "George Washington is done, and so is Diamond Stripes". However even though it looked to Denmans eye that he was done, when GW comes to the top of the stretch at least 20 lengths behind the leaders, you can see he is STILL being ridden hard while it looks like like Diamond Stripes is not being pushed anymore since his day was essentially over. For what reason was GW still being hard ridden at that point when he was hopelessly out of it? why wasn't he wrapped up early on after it was clear that he wasn't going to be competitive in any sense of the word. wouldn't it have made sense just to wrap him up and let him gallop home?
don't horses continue to try to follow the riders commands even when they may have nothing left?
it just really irritates me to read all of the euro criticism of the US, drugs, dirt racing, etc, all of it because of the tragic demise of GW, when in my view this horse was not spotted well, mishandled, and apparently ridden to exhaustion on a surface he had never raced on before and at a distance that looked to be beyond what he was comfortable with.
imo at the point when he had no reaction on the backstretch and was being passed after asking him for run, he should have been shut down and as someone else put it "allowed to gallop home to retirement".