The Week in Review: Inquiring Minds Want to Know, Why No Derby Inquiry?

[Wandering Eyes]

As the three grim-faced Churchill Downs stewards tersely hustled out of the GI Kentucky Derby press conference Saturday night after chief state steward Barbara Borden recited 60 seconds of prepared remarks and the trio refused to face follow-ups about their controversial disqualification, they were peppered with shouted questions that deserved answers.

“Why no transparency?” blurted one frustrated media member.

“Aren’t you a state employee?” another asked stridently of Borden, who is appointed by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission (KHRC). “Why do you feel like you shouldn’t take any questions? [Don’t you] think it’s your duty to take questions?”

And resonating loudest in the aftermath of the stunning decision, “Why no inquiry?”

No other winner in 144 previous runnings of the Derby had ever been stripped of victory for an in-race infraction (Dancer’s Image in 1968 was DQ’d for a drug positive in a post-race test). But while the Derby demotion of 9-2 second favorite Maximum Security (New Year’s Day) from first to 17th for interference on the far turn is unprecedented, Borden and colleagues Brooks “Butch” Becraft (a state steward) and Tyler Picklesimer (an association steward) would apparently like us to believe their decision was strictly a result of “our typical procedure,” and that the running of America’s most important horse race was adjudicated no differently than a maiden claimer at Turfway Park in the dead of winter.

This column won’t argue whether or not the elevation of 65-1 runner-up Country House (Lookin At Lucky) as the official race winner was the right call or the wrong call. That debate will linger in perpetuity, destined to remain part of Derby lore long after the initial shock of this controversy fades.

To me, the question that begs a straightforward answer is exactly how close did the stewards come to hanging up the “official” sign before they received a jockey’s objection from Flavien Prat that would alter history? If they had instead received an “all clear” notification from the outrider, would the order of finish have stood?

Prat’s mount, Country House, clearly did not take the worst of the chain-reaction tightening caused by Maximum Security’s shifting several paths off the inside while turning for home. But Prat had little to lose in lodging the foul claim against winning jockey Luis Saez, and his decision to ask for a review capped a bizarre ending to what was otherwise a compelling renewal of the Derby.

Put another way, were the Churchill stewards on the cusp of letting the incident go–chalking it up to the heat-of-battle rough riding that occurs in almost every Derby–when the foul claim jolted them to the reality that more stringent scrutiny was in order?

And could you necessarily blame the stewards for taking an agonizing 22 minutes to reach their decision considering the current climate of crisis that shrouds the sport? When equine safety is under a polarized national microscope, and the judges suddenly have to ponder the devastating implications of what might have happened if the clipping of heels between Maximum Security and War of Will (War Front) had triggered a tragic, multi-horse spill on live TV?

But if the KHRC and Churchill Downs, Inc., are going to stick to the emerging narrative that Maximum Security’s DQ was a straightforward, by-the-book stewards’ decision, it’s important to note at least one page of the rule book was skipped.

According to section 810 2:040 Sec. 5 (9) of the Kentucky Administrative Register, which deals with “Duties and Responsibilities of Stewards,” the inquiry sign is supposed to be “posted immediately after the horses have crossed the finish line in a race if any doubt is held by a steward or other racing official as to the fairness of the running of that race.”

So if the stewards were, in fact, already zeroing in on the far-turn incident as a cause for concern, why was this was not reported to the public as required?

On the Churchill Downs broadcast feed, no inquiry was posted or announced at any time after the horses crossed the Derby finish wire. The only indication that something might be amiss came a full three minutes and 40 seconds after the race, when announcer Travis Stone verbally relayed that the rider of Country House had lodged an objection against Maximum Security.

The “Why no inquiry?” distinction is important because DQs that arise solely from a jockey’s objection are by far in the minority across all levels of American racing. Although no exact stats are kept on this, anecdotal experience will bear out that most DQs are either the result of a stewards’ inquiry or the combination of an inquiry and a subsequent jockey’s objection together.

The reason is obvious, and you see this in all forms of sports officiating: Referees, umpires–and yes, horse racing stewards–don’t like to make reactive decisions solely based on a participant’s allegation that wrongdoing occurred. To put in bluntly, no official likes to have it appear as if they missed a crucial call that had to be pointed out by a participant.

The full 22-minute wait was made even more confusing than it needed to be because it was also not immediately disclosed that Jon Court, the rider of Long Range Toddy (Take Charge Indy), had also claimed foul against Maximum Security.

Long Range Toddy had checked hard between horses and plummeted to the back of the pack. Without knowing that a potential DQ of the winner now involved the 17th-place horse, it gave the impression that what was at stake was the reversal of Maximum Security and Country House as the 1-2 finishers, and not a takedown all the way to 17th place for the horse who crossed the wire first.

In fairness, stewards nationwide do routinely screen for fouls at all levels of racing in the immediate aftermath of races without formally lighting the “inquiry” sign. But this was the Kentucky Derby, the pinnacle of the profession. What, if anything, were the Churchill stewards pondering in that 3:40 gap between when the final Derby runner crossed the line and when Prat’s objection was announced?

If the stewards truly were independently inquiring into the far-turn Derby incident before the foul claims came in but just made a mistake in not letting the public know in a timely manner, that’s fine–so long as they step up to the podium and say so when explaining their decision after the fact.

Instead, by refusing to field questions from the media at the press conference, it feeds the perception that the stewards were not intending to rule on any Derby interference until they were swayed by the foul claims.

The Derby is the focal point of the Churchill Downs brand and, by extension, the pride of all of Kentucky. The track and the commonwealth have invested 145 years in building up the Derby as the greatest two minutes in all of sports. When the stewards who are tasked with the ultra-important responsibility of officiating the race refuse to explain in detail how and why they arrived at their decision to alter history, it tarnishes the first jewel of the Triple Crown.

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