Why would you not know BEFORE the race if the horse had a chip knee or water? For that kind of $$, id damn well have an idea...
What if the actual chipping happened in the race? Given the run from the 12 hole to the first turn, the horse probably had to exert a particular effort that it hadn\'t tried before...that sort of effort could have caused the chip in the first place. The real question about having so much money at stake is why did they make it 9 furlongs with 12 horses? They should have either made it 10 furlongs with 12 horses or else 9 furlongs with 9-10 horses. Or they should have reconfigured the race to a different finish line giving the horses sufficient run up to the first turn. The results show that a horse in gate 12 in the configuration they ran has to make a kamikaze effort to try to overcome the consequences of such a bad post.
I suppose that people could xray the horse before every race, but that is not practical. Also, if the horse seems fine and is behaving fine, you are not going to race because an Xray shows something? I think there are plenty of horses who have had long successful racing careers with terrible Xrays (Xtra Heat?). Usually if there is something wrong, the horses knows it and gives off some sort of symptom.