Flatter: Stewards hide behind closed doors at Preakness 2025

And so Umberto Rispoli makes like Moses with Journalism in Preakness 2025 and parts that proverbial trickle like it is the Red Sea. And Flavien Prat drives Goal Oriented like he was about to miss the off ramp.

And so last year Tyler Gaffalione reaches out to give something other than a love tap to Forever Young when he is riding Sierra Leone within a nose of a victory in the Kentucky Derby.

And so six years ago Luis Sáez and Maximum Security cut in front of other shoppers moving over to the just-opened express lane, and 22 minutes later their Kentucky Derby check bounces at the register.

Retired steward has strong opinion about Preakness.

Right or wrong, those are prevailing perceptions. And so the stewards look at all these, and they go out of their way to say nothing to the taxpaying and handle-generating public they are salaried to serve. Silent but deadly. No matter the context, that really stinks.

I have beaten this drum before. Stewards hearings for inquiries and objections should be seen and heard while they are happening, especially for Grade 1 races. And by seen and heard, I mean at the track, on the video feed and shouted to the heavens. If stewards topple a tree in the racetrack forest, and if no horseplayer can hear it, what noise were they trying to hide?

It is cheap to make this happen now. They do it in England and Australia. It is not an illusion of openness. It is the real deal. It has been going on for decades over there and down under. Over here it is a vast wasteland cloaked and daggered in secrecy. The papal election of Leo XIV had nothing on the inner workings behind the closed doors of stewards’ booths.

The inquiry light went on after the Preakness. Then it went off. The roof may have leaked at Pimlico, but the neon was pulsating just fine for all of maybe three minutes.

Unless it was hidden like an Easter egg in the digital files of the Maryland Racing Commission, we do not even know if Adam Campola, Ross Pearce and Russell Derderian voted 3-0 or 2-1 or whether someone accidentally bumped the toteboard switch. All we know is Donna Brothers rode her horse out to Rispoli on the first turn, told him there was an inquiry, fielded the answers to a couple questions and then reported there was no change to the results. For all we know, the stewards merely inquired about whether there were any crab cakes left in the press-box cafeteria.

An explanation for Saturday’s inquiry is nowhere to be found. We all know the why came from the three-horses-in-two-paths fender bender at the top of the stretch. We do not know the what, as in what the stewards were saying to one another. If this had been Royal Ascot or the Melbourne Cup, we would know every word. But not here in the republic for which we stand.

A little more than a year ago, Kentucky stewards took 11 minutes to make the Mystik Dan-Sierra Leone-Forever Young trifecta official. It was the inquiry that was not an inquiry. No explanation necessary, right? Sure. Let’s go with that.

In 2019 it took 2 1/2 hours before stewards appeared in the media room at Churchill Downs to explain Maximum Security’s disqualification. Then and now the chief steward, Barbara Borden, read a 59-second statement and took no questions. I came to learn since that commonwealth law discourages public officials working for what now has the unwieldy name Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation from making public comment.

All this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether we agree or disagree with what stewards decide. In the case of the Preakness, I had most of my money on Journalism cold over the boxed combination of Gosger and Clever Again in exacta and trifecta bets. When the 2 was not taken down, I won.

This is about integrity and, in the case of Journalism getting wedged between Goal Oriented and Clever Again, safety. Hmmm. What are the two middle words that contribute to the acronym HISA? As long as it has federal portfolio, it should have some say-so here.

As much as I have been a critic of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, it deserves credit for shedding light on matters that used to be hidden. It has shepherded reluctant racetrack operators and state administrators into the open with horse deaths, not just in races but also in training. It also has maintained an open paper trail in the case of Júnior Alvarado exceeding the inflexible limit of six crop strikes when he rode Sovereignty to victory this month in the Kentucky Derby.

Even though we are overdue to let the public peek behind the curtain and see what stewards are doing, my friend John Scheinman is not so sure. He is the two-time Eclipse Award-winning writer who I call the mayor of Pimlico, and he is reluctant to have live streaming of inquiries and objections. He fears stewards would be looking over their collective shoulders and that it would be better to have them report after the fact. Sorry, John. That reeks of executive sessions, smoke-filled rooms and hiding in the treehouse.

Then again, that would be an improvement over the mute button that has been activated permanently by stewards across America. There have been some exceptions. The New York Racing Association offers explanations after the fact, and the Breeders’ Cup famously had California stewards hold a news conference after Bayern was not disqualified for his veering start before winning the 2014 Classic. Those are exceptions that have been little more than toes in the water.

Rehearsed explanations of controversial decisions are no substitute for kicking the door open on stewards’ rooms. Better to see them show their work than to have them talking down to horseplayers who understandably have sensitive b.s. gauges.

While we are at it, may we also please have those sweeping physical exams from veterinarians made public on the eve of big races?

I know. One thing at a time.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.