Saturday, February 21 at Gulfstream Park was the kind of day that served as a billboard for what fans love best about the sport.
It was a warm, sunny Florida day, with temperatures in the 70's that raised the envy of the parka-clad folks in the Northeast and Midwest.
There were 12 races, seven of them with 10 or more horses, making for some grand wagering opportunities.
There were eight stakes races, seven of them graded.
Those stakes featured the 2015 debut of Horse of the Year runner-up Main Sequence and an important Kentucky Derby prep.
It also focused a spotlight on a source of controversy as old as the sport itself.
More than the implications on the Derby or this year's Horse of the Year race, what arose from such a wonderful day of racing was a loud outcry over the decisions of the stewards.
The there were three races in which the stewards posted the inquiry sign and one disqualification, which just so happened to take place in the biggest race of all, the $400,000 Fountain of Youth for 3-year-olds.
At the end of the day, there was a heated outcry over the stewards' body of work. In an era when Twitter has magnified the opinions of a handful so that some believe it's the will of the masses, there was talk of how wrong the stewards were, how much it damages the sport and how changes are desperately needed.
What's actually needed is a page of the Aaron Rodgers playbook, namely: R-E-L-A-X. If anyone believes there's a way to perfect the art of ruling on claims of foul in horse racing, they must be napping next to Rip Van Winkle. A horse race is not like a football or basketball player stepping on an out-of-bounds line or a tennis ball landing inside the service box, which can be seen in a high-definition freeze frame.
As much as films can show contact between horses, there's a need for someone to use their judgment in determining the severity of the incident. Was it harmless or incidental? Did a jockey overreact?
Any time you bring the human element into the equation, mistakes are going to happen. Wrong decisions will be made.
You certainly don't celebrate mistakes, but you can't over-react because there is no sure-fire solution.
Any time stewards make a decision, there's usually no shortage of critics - which is natural. When a ruling goes your way, you're usually too busy cashing tickets to launch into a Twitter war. You generally accept the fact that things went your way this time, knowing it may not be long before one of your horses get taken down.
Critics, or those who suffered a financial consequence, are going to scream. Yet think about it. Is there anyone who has agreed with your opinion on a disqualification 100 percent of the time? Of course not. Some incidents are not that clear-cut where the ruling is an absolute no-brainer. Having seen numerous press box debates over inquiries, you come to understand there's no way to apply an accurate batting average to stewards' decisions. Who can say what's right or wrong when there might be a 50-50 split in perception of what should happen. Over the years, when you see highly astute viewer of the sport like turf writers John Pricci and Paul Moran argue about an inquiry, you come to understand the challenges a steward faces and appreciate the no-win situation they often face.
Knowing that, if someone turns their back on racing because of a stewards' decision they probably were not going to stick around for long anyway. Unless they just popped out of a cave and it's their first fling with a sport, they should know this phenomenon happens in every sport and fans in football, baseball, basketball and even hot dog eating might grumble, but they deal with it.
The same goes for the belief that the stewards have an ulterior motive in their decisions. Some cynics claim they never take down a horse trained by the likes of current and future Hall of Famers like Bob Baffert and Todd Pletcher. They make decisions based on a horse's odds.
There's no way of saying those things never happen, but for the most part they are claims no different than what you'll hear in other sports about a referee being biased or favoring a certain teams. In the NFL this past post-season, Detroit Lions fans felt the NFL and its referees were Dallas Cowboys fans. A week later, Cowboys fans felt the officials wore Cheeseheads and were in cahoots with Rodgers and his Green Bay Packers.
So for racing it's foolish to believe these claims are damaging to the sport and should never happen. Anytime a judgment is made, someone is going to launch a conspiracy theory. That's a fact of sporting life.
So for racing it's foolish to believe these claims are damaging to the sport and should never happen. Anytime a judgment is made, someone is going to launch a conspiracy theory. That's a fact of sporting life.
That doesn't mean stewards should not be placed under scrutiny. Ruling on a call that can go either way is one thing. Blowing obvious calls or applying inconsistent logic is another. A key part of the angry reaction to the Gulfstream stewards' decisions was that some people, in their own judgment, believed there was a 180-degree shift in logic in adjudicating the first two inquiries.
In my judgment, though, the stewards got it right.
The first claim of foul came in the day's fourth race, the $100,000 Rampart Stakes. At the top of the stretch, the race had boiled down to a three-horse race. House Rules, on the outside of the trio, held a short lead and was beginning to edge away from Sheer Drama, in the middle, and Wedding Toast, who was on the rail. Approaching the eighth pole, as House Rules was nearly a length clear of the other two, she drifted in, forcing jockey Joe Bravo on Sheer Drama to stand up in his irons and check his horse.
House Rules went on to win by a length and a half, but Bravo, to his credit, continued riding his filly and managed to beat Wedding Toast by a head for second.
Shortly after the horses crossed the wire, Bravo, Sheer Drama's trainer, David Fawkes, and everyone who wagered a nickel or more on the 22-1 shot demanded an inquiry. The stewards looked at the films and allowed the result to stand. Their reasoning was that the bumping between House Rules and Sheer Drama did not have a bearing on the order of finish. In their judgment, House Rules was drawing clear at the time of the incident and Sheer Drama was destined to finish no better than second. So why reward her for a foul that most likely did not cost her a placing?
Had Bravo wrapped up on Sheer Drama after the incident and checked in third, House Rules most likely would have been DQ'd to third. Yet as it turned out, each horse wound up where they belonged.
The next debate came after the featured Fountain of Youth Stakes when Upstart, the 4-5 favorite, was disqualified from first and placed second.
Frosted, on the inside, was on the lead but tiring as Upstart ranged up alongside him near the three-sixteenths pole. Outside of them Itsaknockout was gaining ground as well.
When Itsaknockout reached Upstart's rear flank, it appeared that Frosted drifted out, carrying Upstart into Itsaknockout. It was a slight bump and had the bumps stopped there, Upstart probably would have survived the inquiry. But a few strides later as Itsaknockout was still on Upstart's flank, Upstart came out and hit Itsaknockout again, jostling jockey Luis Saez as the New York State-bred drew off to a decisive 2 ¾-length victory over Itsaknockout.
Some believed that if House Rules was not disqualified, Upstart should have received the same treatment. Yet the two races were like apples and oranges. If the Rampart could have been stopped with a pause button a split second before House Rules took away Sheer Drama's path and the betting windows re-opened, House Rules would have been a 1-5 favorite. At the same point in the Fountain of Youth, Itsaknockout was gaining ground and it will never be known if he had enough late kick to surge past Upstart. The outcome was still undecided. The bumps ended all that, creating the grounds for the disqualification.
Two calls, and in my judgment, two correct calls, despite the outcry of "fix."
In the final race of the day, there was another inquiry and the stewards let the result stand.
This time, they should have disqualified the winner. Danish Dynaformer and favored Dreaming of Gold were battling to the wire and on two occasions it appeared as if Danish Dynaformer came out and bumped Dreaming of Gold. Javier Castellano on Dreaming of Gold never stopped riding, giving off the impression that the bumping had no impact on the runner-up, but that view of the race would seem to penalize Castellano for not checking his horse, which probably would have convinced the stewards to reverse the order of finish.
Perhaps the stewards felt both horses were guilty of bumping, but that's not how I saw it. They were correct in 2-of-3 races in my eyes, though there's surely plenty of people who will say they went 3-for-3 or 0-for-3.
That's what happens when human judgment comes into play.
In the end, like officials in any sport, stewards should be scrutinized and reviewed. But who should do it? Track management? They would probably be less inclined than the stewards to ruffle the feathers of a leading trainer because of the impact it could have on the track's bottom line. A state official? Please, let's keep the government out of this.
One answer might be to have a group like the National Thoroughbred Racing Association hire former jockeys, trainers and stewards to review a steward's body of work on an annual basis. This way people with no vested interest in the track's races, and who understand what truly happens in a race, can determine whether a steward is making an occasional mistake or is overmatched by the job.
Meanwhile, as the year unfolds, there will no doubt be more inquiries and louder cries that the stewards blew it. It's inevitable. It's a part of the sport -- and every other sport as well.
Those sports take note of the mistakes, strive to remedy them and move forward - just like racing should.
We're dealing with human judgments here and no one is going to please everyone every time. So let's put everything in perspective and understand that some controversies will never go away. Right, Aaron?