I don't want to get into how Eric Cancels ride was incompetent, or how his riding of late was so bad as to get a steward_decision-like voodoo anxiety when handicapping the race prior.
Let's look at the incident;
exchanged bumps and brushes with the
Initially the
comes a bit into the
. It's relatively incidental and minor.
the final bump, after which where the rider of the
also dramatically took his horse up (and it was probably necessary) was more significant from the
's contact than the early bumps of the
going into the
.
Importantly, this was preceded by the
initially herding the
into the
, followed soon after by the
herding the
into the
Also of significance at the points of contact;
The
was contending for the win placing vs. the other stakes-quality horse, the
.
The
had leveled off and was clearly contending for 3rd place vs. 4th place.
It was a horrible decision.
If the premise of the decision is that a horse vying for 3rd/4th place possibly being
cost a placing(3rd??) should DQ a win contender who exchanges contact in a crowd,
then we need to change the wording of the rule.
