Should Kentucky Derby have had stewards inquiry?

Louisville, Ky.

It was not nearly as intense as the notorious horseback tussle between jockeys in 1933. But what happened between Sierra Leone and Forever Young in Kentucky Derby 2024 certainly brought that story to mind. It also raised questions about whether stewards should have looked into what happened Saturday.

Head-on video of the stretch run showed jockey Tyler Gaffalione reaching to his left with his crop hand and maintaining contact for about two seconds with Ryusei Sakai, who was riding Forever Young. This was just as the horses were reaching the wire in their photo finish chasing Mystik Dan, who won by a nose.

According to what he told his agent, Gaffalione lost his balance.

“I just corrected my horse,” he was quoted to have told Matt Muzikar. “I was pulling him off with the reins and trying to keep him straight. Then when I corrected him, and he swapped over, I lost my balance for a second.”

There was some thought that Gaffalione might have gotten his crop tangled in Forever Young’s reins.

“No, he did not,” Muzikar said. “He goes, ‘I’ve had that happen, but I just lost my balance.’ ”

Derby recap: Mystik Dan holds on for 18-1 upset.

Intentional or not, since there was only a nose between Sierra Leone in second and Forever Young in third, stewards might have considered calling a foul and swapping the two horses in their order of finish. But no inquiry sign was lit, and Forever Young’s trainer Yoshito Yanagi did not lodge an objection.

“After (Sakai) jumped off the horse, he was thinking he felt something,” said Hiroshi Ando, racing manager for the Japan team that traveled to Kentucky. “They were fighting together all the way (down the stretch), not just at that moment. When they got to the top of the straight, they were fighting all the way to the wire. This is racing.”

Rewinding the video to the top of the stretch run, it appears Sakai and Forever Young drifted right to make earlier contact with Sierra Leone, whose paddling tendency with his left-front foot causes him to lug inward in the stretch. They traded bumps the rest of the way.

“My thinking on that there was no inquiry, because (Forever Young) initiated it,” Muzikar said. “It’s kind of like once you initiate, it’s open game. That’s the way the stewards usually look at it.”

After Mystik Dan crossed the wire first, it took nearly four minutes for the top five to be posted. That was not abnormal for a photo finish. It was another seven minutes, though, before the race was declared official, perhaps an indication that there was an inquiry without an inquiry.

Chief steward Barbara Borden and a spokesperson for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission did not respond to text messages requesting an explanation.

The most infamous example of jockeys tangling in the Kentucky Derby was 91 years ago, when Don Meade on Brokers Tip and Herb Fisher on Head Play used their fists and crops on one another down the stretch before Brokers Tip won by a nose. Meade was suspended for 30 days. Fisher got 35, because he also landed the first punch on Meade in the jockeys room.