Makes sense.

And such entries are not first approved by the stewards?

When a horse needs a work but is not on a steward's or vet's list, I always accept the entry without consulting the stews. Common practice. Failure to comply results in a scratch. And long gone are the days when required drills were routinely invented by official clockers.

The rules in West Virginia allow a horse to be entered so long as it is eligible to run at the "time of starting" of the race in which it is entered. According to the rules, even a horse on the veterinarians' list can enter so long as it does not exclude another horse from the race.

That rule is interpreted differently by different state vets, and in practical usage only applies to horses scheduled to remain on the list just for a pre-specified period of time. It's always about how they translate their policies and paperwork to the RTO system and count the days, which I could write a book about.

I've probably checked about 1.5 million entries for eligibility and have dealt with these issues and instances thousands of times. While many rules in racing are sacred and inviolate, others get contorted a bit and morph into flexible policies.

I could explain this much further, but it's late and I need to get home.

And, btw, I didn't state that I've never accepted an entry on a horse still on a vet's (or steward's) list, but rather that entries on horses NOT on the list but needing works are always accepted in my office. There is a distinction. And a critical one , at that.

Reviewed rough estimate..more like just under a million. Hard to say, since we ran year round, 10 races per card 5 or even 6 cards per week for much of my career.

clearly the horse is not unsound and common sense needs to prevail.

if not a go fund me should be established as the punishment greatly exceeds the "crime" and this is no way to treat a 40 year employee.

good luck to mr gazer.

Here is the bottom line. It is not the clocker's job to get a horse qualified to enter. It is his job to record the workouts.

The TRAINER's job is know the rules and act/train in a way the gets his horse entered.

This is not as bad as it sounded at first, but, the way to "fix" rules that are not right is NOT to oignore them or circumvent them.

Stay in your lane, bro. :)

Was no doubt ill advised to "extrapolate" the half-split. At that point it becomes work of fiction. Somebody higher should have signed off on the actual 5/8 work.

Sometimes common sense must over-ride verbatim rules. But that does require some stones. The production of horse races is not always a smooth, risk-free process. Tough calls and trouble tend to pop up.

I think you meant interpolate.
I agree with Tom here.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
If a rule is too rigid or doesn't make sense you don't circumvent the rule.
And why was it such a problem to schedule an additional workout to qualify this horse? Was there a fear that the horse would not qualify again? What important motive was there to not simply report the facts and instead tamper with one's integrity?

I agree with what you are saying, but the rule is not rigid. It's idiotic. It's basically saying that if the horse worked 5F in 58 flat he couldn't run. :lol:

Someone mentioned that they should have gone to a superior to try to get a sign off because the horse certainly beat the 4F in 53 requirement based on the 5F time. That makes the most sense to me. But they also need to improve that rule.

Racing rules can be vague. Many lend themselves to different interpretations. I could expound on this all day-and give examples.

Again, I have worked for 32 years as a racing official, have experience at virtually every job, and have trained and supervised hundreds of fellow officials. In particular, one of my duties has long been to toss out or accept entries based on lots of qualifications and factors. By the thousands. Heck, hundreds of thousands.

So my best perspective here, the thing I can contribute, is a first-hand account of how these things usually get handled behind the scenes. I will let you address the philosophical part.

Btw, in your second to last sentence, I think the wording you want is: "would again fail to qualify."

This.

If they want to fine the guy $250, fine. But a 30 day suspension is insane. How about fix the ridiculously stupid rule?

Who made this idiotic rule? In addition to the 4f only clause, why are bottom maiden claimers treated the same as G1 stakes horses? Why is the 25 lengths the baseline? Every horses in Secretariat's Belmont would have had to work to prove they weren't lame?

In the end, the horse did work 4f in 53 seconds. Work distance has always been kind of arbitrary. They had the actual 4f time. Could for once somebody in racing use some common sense?