frankel,gomez,juddmonte...

[shanahan]

interesting.  No video I can see shows the bumping at the wire...and frankel said \"no beef\" if we\'re taken down...what if it had been the other way around?  Do the CA stewards have ANY Fing Clue?

[BitPlayer]

Shanahan -

You can watch the head-on at calracing.com (free registration required).  Gomez clearly came out about 4 paths in the stretch and eventually bumped Flores, but the bumping was very close to the wire.  I didn\'t bet the race and had no strong opinion about what the stewards should do.

I do think that some jocks get more leeway than others and that there isn\'t a lot of consistency between steward panels from meet to meet.  If you replace Gomez with PVal or bring back the Del Mar stewards from a couple of summers ago, I think the result would have been different.

Given the winner\'s drifting under left-handed urging, the clear contact, and the close finish, I don\'t understand why there was no steward\'s inquiry.

California doesn\'t have a monopoly on questionable calls by stewards.