Coady Media
Jockey Luan Machado Misjudges Finish Line Aboard Sure Winner In Keeneland Finale
It's happened before in horse racing and it undoubtedly will happen again at racetracks that employ more than one finish line.
In the eighth race finale on Wednesday at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky., jockey Luan Machado was well on his way to victory aboard Ultimate Strike for trainer Carlos Santamaria and the Cowboys and Razorbacks Racing Stable. The official chart from Equibase showed the 3-year-old Mineshaft gelding with a commanding 5 1/2-length lead with a furlong remaining in the 1 1/8-mile race on Keeneland's main track.
Ultimate Strike was still cruising at the sixteenth pole when Machado stood up in the irons and relaxed his hands. Ultimate Strike took that as a cue that the race was over, and began to ease up.
Meanwhile, James Graham, last in the run down the backstetch aboard Gotta Have Dreams, had moved up to second with a furlong to run and kept to his task, cutting into Ultimate Strike's lead with every stride and nailed him at the actual finish, winning by a neck.
At Keeneland, because of the configuration of the racetrack, the sixteenth pole is used as the finish line for 1 1/16-mile races. Races at 1 1/8 miles – which allow for a longer run to the first turn at the start of the race than those at 1 1/16-miles – use the normal finish. Other tracks using more than one finish line include Oaklawn and Laurel Park.
Machado apparently thought the sixteenth pole was the finish in this race. It wasn't.
The race, a $20,000 maiden claiming test with a $48,000 purse, paid $27,156 to the winner and $8,760 to the second-place finisher. There was $288,134 wagered in the win-place-show pools, $244,211 in exacta bets, $158,761 in the trifecta, $110,032 in the superfecta, and $983,459 in multi-race wagers ending in the eighth and final race of the day.
Ultimate Strike was 28-1 on the odds board when he entered the starting gate, but bet down in the final seconds to 13-1. The winner, Gotta Have Dreams, was an even bigger price, going off at 19-1 and paying $40.62 to win.
Santamaria, who began training in 2022, had just two career wins going into the race from 96 starts. Ultimate Strike was making his ninth career start. He'd recorded one previous runner-up performance prior to Wednesday.
Machado is a native of Brazil from a well-known racing family there, winning some of that country's biggest races. He came to the U.S. in 2018 at the urging of trainer Wesley Ward, tying for leading rider at Turfway Park in his first meet there, then won the winter/spring meet at the Northern Kentucky track. He's now won a total of 551 races from 3,613 career mounts in North America and is the regular rider of multiple graded stakes winner Next.
Efforts to reach Machado through his agent, Cory Prewitt, were unsuccessful. The rider undoubtedly will have a meeting with the stewards, who will determine what sanctions he will receive.
