Kudos to the NYRA stewards. If this were CALI, they'd take down half the field.
I think the point where the horses enter the stretch, especially on the turf, needs to be treated similarly to the break. Typically, they're bunched and they have momentum from the turn and its difficult to keep them straight. Factor in early lead changes, and many of them are all over the place.
Here's the point: there's the length of the stretch for horses to recover from minor incidents. If they do so, they deserve to win. If they don't, they probably wouldn't have won anyway. If a horse gets shut off because it's been behind, sucking up, the entire race, TOUGH!! Those are the breaks. The jocks need to figure out how to work their way through traffic -- it's not like they've done any running to that point anyway, typically.
I'm all for just letting them ride/run at this point and taking my chances with my jockey RATHER than the stewards. Last thing horseplayers need at this point is MORE takedowns.
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