So do you think the first disqualification of a horse in 145 years will affect the sport?
Right or wrong I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the ultimate winners with all the booing from the crowd.
I think the decision to disqualify Maximum Security is going to have some long range repercussions.
@doschicos Out of curiosity, how much do you watch horse racing? I’m curious to know if fans of the sport agree with the call. (I’m fully ok with you having your opinion whether you watch it or not - just curious about “who” supports it.)
Horse racing is such a dirty sport that I don’t get too worked up about things like this.
I wouldn’t have disqualified the winner for the sole reason that the official winner has no business whatsoever calling themselves Derby winners.
Maximum Security wasn’t DQed for impeding Country House. He was DQed for impeding War of Will. His leg hit War of Will’s leg twice. The stewards say this was dangerous as well as illegal.
@OhiBro I’m not sure anyone except the owners consider themselves Derby winners. Perhaps some non-racing fans.
How much horse race watching qualifies as being a “fan of the sport”? I typically watch the big races. I spent my childhood growing up right next door to a storied race horse breeding farm. I have family members who are well known in the world of hunters and jumpers. I’m not sure how relevant your question is, honestly.
I’ll leave it up to the officials who have a better view of everything than I do. I’m not losing any sleep over it but I don’t invest a lot of emotion in the sport.
Very unfortunate ending. I have some mixed feelings about the whole horse racing thing but this seemed strange. For officials to take so much time to overturn a win was painful .
This doesn’t seem to be correct. Maximum Security’s rear leg hit War of Will’s front leg twice. Necessarily, they were close!
“For officials to take so much time to overturn a win was painful .”
I imagine they took the time to make sure they reached what they thought was the right decision. The last disqualification took several days (different circumstances) and is still talked about 50 years later.
@Creekland Our family has dabbled in racing for a long time.None of our horses competed in the Triple Crown races, though. I think tonight’s call may have followed the letter of the law but it ignored the spirit of the law. Ultimately, the win was taken from the best athlete in the race, who ran the best race.
@“Cardinal Fang” — the refs on any field of sport.get it wrong sometimes. I think this is one of those times. One in 145 years.
The problem is that for every 100 and more football games, basketball games, baseball games and a 1000 calls good or disputed during that time none of those calls made will have the impact this one did.
Tell that to the Buffalo Sabres. A whole lot of hockey fans still remember Brett Hull’s foot in the crease on the Cup-winning goal in 1999.
This, from 2016, sheds some light on stewards and what they do: https://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock/tough-call-stewards-officiating-derby-tall-order/was-dqd/
The Borden in this quote is Chief Steward Barbara Borden, one of the three stewards who made the decision today. It really sounds like they think the swerve may have cost Will to Win the race.
Because of the volume of money bet?
Here is a list of infamous disputed calls in other sports:
*War of Will, not Will to Win
Everything I know about horse racing I learned from Dick Francis. I don’t follow the sport at all but even I know that race horses are dying in unprecedented numbers (or I hope the numbers are unprecedented.) Isn’t that a bigger problem than a bad call?
I thought that since he interfered with other horses, he deserved to be disqualified. The commentators reminded me of figure skating judges - like it didn’t matter if he’d messed up, he was the best horse on most days and so somehow deserved to win. There was one angle where they were looking at the horses close to head on where it was pretty clear that the horses got bumped out into each other and did jostle into Country House – but I think the bottom line is that the horses he cut off really got pushed off stride and had no way to recover. So… I thought it seemed like a good call. I don’t think it ruins racing - was actually more interesting than the average Derby in my book. I see questions being asked like, “Were horse racing rules followed too closely?” Well… if you don’t follow them in the Derby, when the heck do they count and should they be followed?
Horse racing can be a dangerous sport for horses and jockeys. If they don’t call things like what happened today, what kind of precedent does that set? As it is, today could have been much worse resulting in a horrible collision. Rules are there for a reason and need to be enforced to keep horses and riders safe and to keep competition fair.
I think the officials made the right call. Even jockey Luis Saez for Maximim Security admitted immediately after the race his horse got spooked from the crowd, leaving his lane, and he had to guide the horse back into lane one. The jockey was also not as excited as you would have expected him to be having just won the Kentucky Derby as he likely knew that he and his horse did something wrong in the last turn and you could see the concern on his face. Lastly, there’s rules is place to make horse racing fair and to protect the jockeys and horses. Maximum Security broke one of these rules and was rightly disqualified, saying he was clearly the best horse today is flat wrong as “the best horse” needs to run a clean race. And people saying they will never watch another horse race are just being childish. Sports have rules, you break a rule you suffer the consequences. Thank god the Kentucky Derby officials had the guts to make the right, yet unpopular call today.
That was the right call. That was a DQ, just like in any other race at every track. It happens all the time. Max Sec was placed 17th behind Long Range Toddy. Just count the blessing that there was no catasthropic pile-up during the biggest race of the year. We will never know if WoW or LRT could have beaten MS. WoW lost a lot of momentum and it took a lot of energy just to get back in rhythm or LRT getting a second wind. We will never know this because MS got in their way.