Contraversial Game Dude

Yesterday's Santa Anita Handicap could go down as one of the most contraversial finishes ever. In the final stretch there where 3 horses who had a chance to get the win, favored Twirling Candy and longshots Setsuko and Game On Dude. Those three where fighting it out for the lead when contact was made that made Twirling Candy go sideways and make might have even more contact with Setsuko and Game on Dude. Eventually Twirling Candy backed up and Quechi Man made one last push to get to the top two, but couldn't Game on Dude beat Setsuko by a long nose.

After about 20 minutes of waiting for the stewards to make their decision on weather to take down Game On Dude and elevate to Setsuko, they decided not to make any changes. This was a very contraversial move as many thought that the winner should have been taken down. Now granted many of those people had Twirling Candy on their tickets, but even if G Dude had been taken down, TC still would not have been in the top three.

With Tweebster finishing uptrack I didn't have a dog in the fight, but I liked Setsuko for a while now so part of me wanted to see him elevated. However, the winning jockey was Chantal Sutherland who along with Rosie Napravnik and Emma-Jayne Watson are three of the best female jockeys in North America. So I was hoping that G Dude would not be taken down. Of course that was being the case. My thoughts immedatly went to the three horses involved in the scuffle, G Dude, TC and Set. I had hoped that they all came out of the race fine, but it sounds like that Setsuko was injured. A shame because he has been through a lot the past year (he was ill and put on anti biotics). Lets hope that it's not an more serious injury. No word on G Dude or Twirling Candy.

Did the stewards make the right call not to take down Game On Dude? Take a look for yourselves,



Leave a comment in the bottom of this post and I'll include some of them in a post with the weekend recap next week!