[robfla]

Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS

It probably didn't help matters any time-wise.


Without seeing the race - and just looking at the chart - it was obvious that the 2nd place finisher Head Play was tons better than the winner.

Head Play was the leader after 6fs - the horses racing 2nd-3rd-4th after six furlongs finished 'Pulled Up'-12th by about 30 lengths- and 11th by about 18 lengths in a field of 13. Brokers Tip closed from 11th.

I remember reading an article where at the time, there was no photo finish camera, or any other such technology, and that there were 4 stewards in the grandstand with binoculars making the decision on the finish. The owner of Broker's Tip was very charitable to Kentucky, so they favored Broker's Tip in the decision. So, in reality, Broker's Tip could have easily retired a maiden.

To his dying day in 1983, Herb Fisher maintained that he had been cheated out of a victory in the 1933 Kentucky Derby. That was the notorious Fighting Finish Derby, the one in which Fisher, aboard Head Play, battled with Don Meade, riding Brokers Tip, down the stretch at Churchill Downs. It was old-fashioned roughhouse race-riding at its best—or worst. When the horses crossed the line, the finish was too close to call. Since there was no film patrol or photo-finish camera in those days, the decision rested with four stewards who watched the race through binoculars from their booth atop the grandstand roof.

As Fisher told it, three of the four stewards subsequently admitted to him that Head Play, not Brokers Tip, appeared to be the winner of the 59th Derby. But the chief steward, Charles Price, overruled his colleagues and dismissed Fisher's claim of foul, declaring Brokers Tip the winner by a nose. One reason for this decision, Fisher believed, was that the naked eye always favors the inside horse—Brokers Tip, in this case. But even more important, as Fisher saw it, was that Brokers Tip was owned by the Idle Hour Stock Farm of Colonel E.R. Bradley.

"Bradley was the king of Kentucky in those days," Fisher told me in 1983 during an interview for the Louisville Courier-Journal. "Gave away hundreds of thousands to charity. No way [the stewards] weren't going to give it to him. If that had been me on his horse, I'd have won it."

"Bradley was the king of Kentucky in those days," Fisher told me in 1983 during an interview for the Louisville Courier-Journal. "Gave away hundreds of thousands to charity. No way [the stewards] weren't going to give it to him. If that had been me on his horse, I'd have won it."

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...#ixzz1JVPxIh3n