The biggest security disqualification presented by Woodford Reserve in the 2019 Kentucky Derby had an impact on many controversies, and the debate sometimes felt like the 1950 Kurosaki film “Rashomon.” We all saw the same race, but so many people have different interpretations of what they saw. Whose interpretation should determine history?
This was not the first time that Triple Crown had to suffer through a long-running discussion of “Rashmond” over multiple interpretations of race. A similar controversy began to foster seconds after he crossed the finish line when the Secretariat won the 1973 Preakness on his way to conquer the Triple Crown.
Shortly after the office’s brilliant last final finish, the Pimlico Timer reported that the final time of the 1 3/16 mile race was 1:55, a good time, but second-later than the Canonero II preakness record set in 1971. Still, there was no reason to doubt the time of the race track. This was measured by the “electric eye,” known as visual impairment, and was caused only when a horse smashed the beam of light onto the racetrack. Vismatic was thought to be more accurate than Crockers using Stopwatch, which allows for artificial errors.
However, when the official race time was revealed, the buzz spreads into a press box above the racetrack. Frank Robinson, Daily Race FormI was recording another time. And Robinson’s time was not a fifth of a second from the track’s time, but a full second and a fifth of a second. Robinson recorded the secretariat at 1:53 2/5. Was he doing that? He was a veteran watchmaker and he knew the difference between clicking a stopwatch and making your hair too early or slower, making an error for more than a second. He checked out other grass writers recording races from other vantage points and saw what they came up with. To my surprise, he was not the only person who had a different time than the truck. Daily Race FormI also had the chief clockter French Schwartz at 1:53 2/5. Both were not able to create the same error independently. It should have been the wrong machine! Plus, 1:532/5 was more than enough to beat Canonero’s record.
He eventually reached the secretariat trainer Lucian Laurin, and said there was a discrepancy in the ending time. Daily Race Form They were so sure of their watch that they chose to run their time on the race charts rather than the official time, and noted in their publication that they believe the secretariat holds new records. The day after the race, Laurin announced that he would request a review of the time before it was shipped to New York to prepare for the Belmont stakes.
It turns out that Pimlico did not rely solely on visual machines. They also had truck clocker et McLean Jr. as a backup in case the machine breaks down. By Monday, Pimlico announced that MacLean had actually run the Clock Office at 1:54 2/5 before visual impairment, but he failed to report the time to the stewards on race day. The Stewards voted on that Monday to change the official time to reflect MacLean’s time. Perhaps they hadn’t done anything in all of this, as just keeping a record from Canonero wasn’t enough. Laurin said the ruling “makes me cold” and “it’s very important.” However, he released the issue as he prepared the office for Belmont and got the opportunity to win his first triple crown in 25 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfwwiyqykgc
However, CBS was not satisfied with allowing it on its own. The network aired a 30-minute broadcast on the controversy, showing the secretariat and Canonero races side by side, comparing them frame by frame. The network appears to be convinced that the secretariat had broken records and turned it into a national controversy by dedicating 30 minutes of airtime to questions.
The Secretariat continued to win Belmont in an epic way, breaking its records. In three official race records under the belt, Secretariat owner Penny Chenelly decided to formally request a review of Preakness Time by the Maryland Race Commission on June 18th. This was not an inch issue. The evidence seemed undeniable. But that didn’t seem to be the case to anyone.
Write in Baltimore Sunracing editor William Boniface called the evidence “flaky” and “situational.” He found Chenelly’s request for a hearing to be uncharacteristic and selfish and unfair to her. “She is asking the commissioner to consider moving Preakness records away from another horse.
The Maryland Race Commission held a hearing in July, hearing testimony from a long list of expert witnesses, including CBS producers, and viewed multiple recordings of races and races from 1971. Incredibly, they added that, now, “destroy the integrity of all sporting events,” given the evidence that time was wrong, in order to change the time.
The achievements were broken in 1985 after standing with Canonero and tied together in 1996 and 2007, but none were faster than the secretariat’s unofficial Daily Race Form time. The Maryland Racing Commission finally agreed to reconsider the questions and voted 7-0 to change the official time for the office’s finish to 1:53 flat. Chenelly was delighted to see her horse finally get his deadline, commenting that she was probably just not right in 1973. “But we’re always seeing that in sports now,” she said in 2012.
She is probably right. Returning to him in 1973 Baltimore Sun Column William Boniface said, “If the sport reaches a point where there is no official officially until the tape is reviewed, it will be a sad situation.” Today in the state of sports today in the 2019 Kentucky Derby drama, and today in video reviews in sports that seem never to end, I think Boniface passed away in 2005.
However, while reasonable people can object whether video evidence reviews are robbing the excitement of drama and sports, one is uncontroversial. There is only one truth, and nothing selfish or unfair about seeking it. You may not think that a player’s knee is on the ground. Whatever you might think, only one thing actually happened. And it’s good for our competitors, connections, all sports, to do everything we can to identify that truth as closely as possible.
The “official” signs can brighten up on the tote board, but the second it actually took a big red to get around that track remains the same. Whether you believe it or not, the number is true once and forever.
Note: This story was originally released and updated in May 2019.
