‡ Confusion, Tragedy, and Apparent Incompetence at Assiniboia Downs > Thanks to a thoughtful reader, who alerted me to this story yesterday. On Monday night at Assiniboia Downs, the 4th race was a 5.5f. MSW event for two-year-old fillies. There were five runners. Soon after the start, the #1 horse, Onemorsteptoheavan, unseated her rider (see attached video clip). The #6 Stringin Me On essentially led throughout, and passed the wire five lengths clear of the 2nd and 3rd place finishers. As that horse was heading back towards the winner's circle, her rider, Rachaad Knights, failed to see that the outrider and loose horse were galloping at full speed in the opposite direction, and there was a terrible collision. According to the embedded tweet, the people involved in the accident were "uninjured", but Stringin Me On was euthanized due to injuries suffered. Without going deeply into the topic, it should be obvious that great precautions should be taken in efforts to prevent such accidents. A siren, and/or lights on a designated pole (or poles), should be activated whenever there is a loose horse on the track. Decades ago I suggested to several tracks that two different colors might also help riders to distinguish between the directions that the loose horse is travelling in, etc. Beyond the sad loss of a horse, the Assiniboia Downs stewards also appear to have made at least one, and possibly two mistakes in the official placings. The ill-fated Stringin Me On was DQd, and placed fourth, ostensibly for having been responsible for the unseating of Onemorsteptoheavan's rider (see attached chart). The visual evidence to support the decision (see attached video clip) is not at all clear-cut. Note that the rider of the horse who was unseated lodged a claim of foul against the rider of the #2 horse, and the rider of that one claimed foul against the #5 horse. But while that may superficially support the interpretation that Stringin Me On set off a three-horse chain reaction, the video evidence is not compelling. It does appear that she came in and caused the #5 horse to steady briefly, but that appears to have possibly been unrelated to the subsequent unseating of the rider on #1. Over two seconds pass between the initial steadying of the #5, and the unseating, which is the equivalent of roughly 10 lengths. Suspiciously, Assiniboia Downs did not provide a head-on replay, which would minimally help to answer any related questions. Compounding the dubious DQ decision, Stringin Me On was, for some inexplicable reason, placed fourth, despite the filly that she purportedly interfered with having lost her rider, and the one which she did likely cause to steady having finished 5th. She should have been placed last, behind the riderless horse, and the apparent mistake directly impacted the Superfecta result, arguably causing the $16k pool to be incorrectly distributed. A bad day all the way around for Assiniboia Downs, and there are still plenty of questions that need to be answered officially.