Derby

[Rackonteur]

@Laurierace

What LaurieB said. Think if you were scrubbing the shower walls for several minutes. You scrub away with your right hand then as it gets tired, switch to your left and you can keep right on scrubbing. The reason they do the left in the turns is the same reason we switch to the inside lead when cantering a course of jumps, it makes it easier to stay balanced and let the centrifugal force help carry you around.

Thanks. That is actually what I was thinking but I wanted to ask because I didn’t know.

I learned to write left-handed for the same reason.

[MintHillFarm]

@snaffle1987

but it was a serious safety concern. and they brought MS down over the safety aspect in regards to War of Will. not what happened to the others in that group. But if Scrappy T went on to win that race; he would’ve been DQ’d.

Yes, I guess I feel like there should have been something done, talk about a safety concern! Wow.

[Where_sMyWhite]

Rackonteur, sometimes when watching a race (not necessarily the KD), I’ve seen a horse on the “wrong” lead (ie, right lead) coming down the stretch and either swap and recover to make a stronger finish or to get passed by a horse that did swap coming out of the turn. It does make a difference.

You can often see the swap again after they cross the wire and head into the clubhouse turn as part of their cool down. As they hit the turn, they’ll swap; for me sometimes easier to see as their gait has started to slow down as they’re done running.

[dressagetraks]

I remember reading that Spectacular Bid did not want to change leads in the Belmont, and he was a horse with no previous lead change difficulties at all. Obviously, his foot injured that morning was hurting.

In my opinion, not that mine counts for anything in the great scheme of things, he was the one among the first-two-but-lost-the-Belmont horses who I think most deserved that TC that he didn’t get.

[merrygoround]

@snaffle1987

I think part of the problem is around the final turn, War of Will went for and tried to create a hole that wasn’t there. If you watch the head on footage of them coming around the turn, you will see War of Will, turn off the rail and start coming to the right flank of Maximum Security. At that point, Maximum Security also made the same move at the same time, beginning to come off the rail. Likely due to the sea of water puddled on the rail.

The entire time, Long Range Toddy was right next to Maximum Security; as he had been along most of the back stretch. So even if Maximum Security had not moved right, War of Will was putting himself in a position to run into Long Range Toddy and run up the ass of MS. Maximum Security then shied away from something, swapped leads which took him slightly farther right; cutting off War of Will who was in the process of trying to create a hole that didn’t exist to begin with.

I have seen the still photos of the incident. They are not pretty and all are lucky to have walked away unscathed. But I will stand by my comment that if War of Will wasn’t looking for a non existent hole to plow through, even if MS moved right, he wouldn’t have endangered Long Range Toddy, bumped him, yes. War of will was running rank up on MS heels up the back stretch and into the turn and at the far turn, Gaflione let him loose with no where to go as the rest of the field in front of him hadn’t yet turned on the gas.

Gaflione didn’t protest and was never approached by officials as they had no benefit to protesting. Pratt protesting looks like a winey sore loser who knew exactly the benefit he was after and he had nothing to lose by doing so. and Court had no chance in hell at the race so I am not sure why he joined the complainers club. Toddy hates the mud and Court used up all of his gas in his tank by the top of the stretch. He didn’t finish at the bottom because he got bumped.

Not sure how these officials and jockeys and trainers expect 3 yr olds to act in an environment like that. pouring rain, standing water in tire tracks on the inside lane, the track was so muddy you could barely walk in the walkover, 150,000 screaming lunatics, screens, music, etc and a 20 horse stampede around the oval in such conditions. How do they expect these horses to be perfect the entire way around like they are machines driven by a steering wheel?

As this video shows!

https://www.courier-journal.com/videos/sports/horses/kentucky-derby/2019/05/10/kentucky-derby-2019-video-disputed-disqualification-luis-suez/1165620001/?fbclid=IwAR2zWCMbXl6jLOU4jHmX_lZ9KVTn4AEdXPH-hvs5lt3q6xETLlBzm41PptM