Early morning the day after the Jack Diamond Futurity, one of the most prestigious races for 2-year-olds in Canada, there remained questions from an incident that cause the winner, BAKTURA, to be disqualified almost 10 minutes after the race.
On the Hastings Racecourse Twitter feed Monday morning there remained two winner’s circle photos of Baktura congratulating the colt on the Jack Diamond win.
Watching the replay of the race on various outlets, including the Daily Racing Form re-cap story by Randy Goulding, Peter Redekop’s juvenile Bakken the USSR jumped the rail at about the finish line the first time around in the 6 1/2 furlong race in the slop. According to the Equibase chart, Bakken the USSR and jockey Jose Gomez “drove up the rail”, brushed Baktura, and then hit and jumped the rail. The youngster raced away in the infield but apparently had serious injuries to his body. Jockey Gomez walked away from the incident.
Meanwhile Baktura, owned by Canyon Farms and ridden by Richard Hamel, continued to fight for the lead, was passed and then took off again to win the $100,000 race by three quarters of length over Russ and Lois Bennett’s Synergy.
The inquiry sign was put up while Baktura and Hamel rode into the winner’s circle and celebrated with trainer Craig McPherson and the Canyon team of Wally Leung.
Almost 10 minutes goes by on the race feed without a replay of the incident to show fans what was being discussed. Hamel did not get off Baktura to go to a phone to talk to the stewards and instead got the picture taken and congratulated the owner and trainer.
Eventually, however, the announcement was made Baktura was disqualified and placed last.
This story will be updated when available.
For now the winner of the Jack Diamond is Synergy, a son of the Bennett’s stallion Sungold (also sire of hotshot filly Infinite Patience). The colt, trained by Barbara Heads, is from the Finality mare Princesses Rule.
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