I think BTW's point is that if the stewards stand in your way of success in the game then your game isn't strong enough. If the .300 hitter can hit .300 in spite of having a few hits taken away by bad calls by umpires, then a few bad calls by the stewards shouldn't really matter in the long run.

And really, this is what it's all about. There were plenty of good plays yesterday at BEL. I mean, Can't Buy Love was 8:5.

True enough.....It doesn't mean the product can't be improved for the fans. Name me another sport where a participant is punished and an explanation isn't expected.

While it is certainly true that you are more likely to improve your handicapping by learning from your losses or misreads. To understand why a DQ occurred is useful.

I would actually like to see the rule explained literally when DQ's occur but then again I would like to see the polytracks go away too and that has about as much a chance of happening as uniform takeout does at 8-10% for all wagers.

That was truly amazing.....and for once I managed to take advantage of that kind of insanity.

I'm not saying it was the worst DQ ever. Was there a slight bump, yes. But it happened exactly five strides from the wire. Could it have cost Tagg's horse second money, possibly, but Admiral Bird had beaten him to punch when they were abreast in midstretch, so I have less sympathy on that one. (Of course, if either of Gyarmati's horses ran second, resulting in a "put up" in the pic-6, I'm sure that I would have been thrilled to see them take the horse down.)

Over the years, you sit at an OTB facility and every time there is contact, you hear people say, "That horse should come down," and they frequently have no idea what they are talking about. My point was that, over time, I have thought that I can watch an inquiry and have a pretty good idea of what the stewards are going to do (that is, what is a foul and what is not). These calls the past week have been so inconsistent that I find it hard to discern what they are looking for. And whether you think the stewards do a good job or not, the repeated refrain on this thread is at the heart of what frustrates people: there is no transparency and no accountability. (No written explanation as to why the horse was taken down or not, and no indication as to what stewards voted what way. If Doc 'n Roll had finished second, would there have been a DQ?)

Let's just hope that we have another Saratoga meet, like last year's, where they are non-factors.

I think a sport where the THIRD BEST finisher is put up as the winner really needs to go a VERY LONG WAY to gain credibility. You can't make WINERS out of LOSERS while ignoring any sense of consistency. Someone hates a horse, is COMPLETELY WRONG, and gets to cash, nonetheless. WTF is that about?



But I've given up trying to make sense of the idiots involved with the game. This includes TRAINERS, STEWARDS, JOCKEYS, and BETTORS. You know why there's never going to be any pressure on the stewards to clean up their act? Because the bettors, as a group, are CLUELESS when it comes to trips and wouldn't know a good one from a bad one. Take 10 arbitrary bettors and have them watch a race: at least 9 will get it ALL WRONG. You can thus never has a consensus on even the most simple of events.

Problem is UNSOLVABLE.


P.S. you don't learn anything from these events. If you liked Admiral Bird, you were CORRECT; if you liked My Man Lars, you were WRONG. Same last week in the Les Antique race. It's like hitting a home run and having the umpires rule it foul.

You were right
 

4-2-1-0 ain't that big of a day.......and being third in the race he figured.

PS not a big Garcia fan