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Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind
The blanket finish is relevent in that a bumping incident could well have caused the victim to have lost a position. I can understand the argument against yesterday's no-call, even though I agree with the steward's decision in this case, but not the one Friday. I think taking Les Antiques down would have been a VERY bad call and really think they got that one right. The Mother Goose? Debatable for sure.
Honestly, and I am not trying to demean your arguments, I guess overall I just care less than most people. That doesn't make me right, or my position the right one, I just think people tend to overemphasize steward's decisions of all kinds while ignoring far more relevent and important issues. I don't think you do this....but most do.
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As a practical matter, there are periods when focus comes to certain aspects of the sport. Over the years, I have viewed the stewards in NY as making more appropriate decisions than their counterparts elsewhere (particularly in FL and KY, where I have seen what I thought to be phantom fouls result in takedowns). That's why the events of the past 10 days have been so baffling.
As a horseplayer, I think that, like anything, the "good calls" and "bad calls" tend to even out. I got taken down from the pic-6 with Admiral Bird on Friday, but was the beneficiary for a fairly comparable amount of money when Raw Silk was (wrongly, IMO) DQ'd at Aqueduct last fall. The problem is that, at a time when racing has enough problems to worry about, we really need consistent adjudication of these matters, for inconsistency breeds questions of integrity and the like (which I am not raising).
You may know the answer to this question which a friend and me were discussing yesterday. With the holiday period, and the high-pressure Saratoga meet around the corner, were any of the "regular" stewards on vacation, with alternate stewards sitting in for them this past week? I recall that, when DRF used to publish the charts in the Form on a daily basis, the identity of the stewards was published as part of an introductory section before the chart for the first race, along with such information as weather, how long the meet ran, etc. This information is not currently part of any charts of which I am aware. At least if this was published, it might create better accountability, or at least a perception of it. (It's like the equivalent in basketball, which I officiate, where some referees call a "tighter" whistle than others - and the players and coaches know it. Human nature being what it is, I assume the stewards, as a collection of persons, are probably the same.)