Finger Lakes 8/24 R7 disqualification

[FantasticDan]

Replay can be watched on their website:

http://www.fingerlakesracetrack.com/Replays.aspx

Altho, atypically, the replay stops before the inquiry is resolved and the race becomes official. :ThmbDown:

Anyway, I had a $20 WP bet on the 12-1 "winner", the :1:. He was taken down for striking the horse to his outside with right-handed whip. Originally, the inquiry didn't even involve the :1: . The stewards replayed the video again and again, and while I agree the whip was obviously near the other horse, and he reacted, I do not see definitive visual proof that the whip did in fact contact the other horse. From the side shot, it looks like the whip came down in front of the horse's nose.

But apparently the stewards saw otherwise, and my horse was chucked to 5th. :mad:

Tough to take. Others see it more plainly than I? And yes, I do wear coke bottle glasses :p

[tzipi]

Well hard to see clearly because of video and whip is so small but looks like from the horses movement he was hit in the face. I know the jockey had to hit right side to keep horse from drifting but why he was using big wide whips with a horse right next to him wasn't too smart and his own fault IMO. Usually a jock will go to a high shoulder whip in order to keep the whip close and to avoid hitting another close horse by accident.

Nice play though. Stinks what happened.

[therussmeister]

You can see the 3 horse react as if he got hit with the whip just before dropping back. It happens at the 1:59 mark on the video

[johnhannibalsmith]

I just like that the chart (which took four pages to locate on EQB for some reason) indicates that the horse was hit in the "face" instead of the head. Don't see that choice often.

[FantasticDan]

Just wanted to make one last comment.. today on Finger Lakes handicapping show, one of their analysts brought up this race and the difficulty in resolving the inquiry. He said "everyone was arguing" about whether the horse was actually hit or not, and that the decision "could have gone either way".

To me this defines inconclusive, and the horse should have been left up.

That is all. :p