By Bloodhorse.com
DEL MAR, Calif. (Nov. 29, 2015) — Nearly three decades of service in the Del Mar stewards’ booth will come to an end for steward Tom Ward after the final race Nov. 29 at the California racetrack.
Ward came down from Northern California and started work at the Oak Tree at Santa Anita Park meet in 1986. He has been a fixture in the booth at Santa Anita since then and—except for a few summer seasons in the 1990s and early 2000s when he worked the Northern California fair circuit—at Del Mar.
In 2004 Ward was called to work at Del Mar when steward Dave Samuel had health problems, and has missed only the 2014 season, for the fair circuit, since then. After the meet ends, Ward will take on a year-round assignment at Los Alamitos Race Course for both the Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred meets.
“It’s an idyllic setting, basically a stone’s throw away from the blue Pacific,” the 69-year-old Ward said of his days at Del Mar. “But there’s a lot of pressure in the summer season. The crowds are bigger, a lot of the owners are here, and they put more pressure on trainers, who put it on riders, who put it on stewards. It’s all part of the food chain.”
Ward, who began as a racing official in 1967, got his first assignment as a steward in 1971 for a harness meet in Sacramento and moved to Thoroughbreds in 1974. He got into racing through his father, Doc Ward, a podiatrist turned horse owner and official, who served as the assistant general manager at Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields for a time.
“As you’d expect, the game has changed a lot since I first started,” Ward said. “Back in the old days, people accepted a stewards’ decision. Nowadays, that’s not necessarily so. But then, our society has changed and people don’t accept authority like they used to.”
Ward’s expressed general philosophy is to “treat someone the way you’d like to be treated.” His primary thought concerning his profession: “I have to be 110% certain that the incident cost a horse a placing. I don’t want to disqualify horses and reach into the public’s pocket unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Having worked so many meets, and every Breeders’ Cup in Southern California since 1986, Ward and his colleagues in the booth have had to make some major calls that invite controversy.
In the 1994 Santa Anita Handicap (gr. I), The Wicked North crossed under the wire first but was disqualified to fourth and Stuka moved up to the win. “That engendered more controversy than any other race,” Ward said.
More recently, two incidents that prompted inquiries but did not result in disqualifications created storms in mainstream—especially social—media.
In the 2011 Big ‘Cap, the number for Game On Dude stayed up after trainer Bob Baffert did some personal lobbying on television and on the phone to the booth. “That won’t happen again,” Ward said.
In the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Classic (gr. I), a bumping incident out of the gate between Bayern and Shared Belief didn’t result in Bayern—the winner—being disqualified.
“The three stewards didn’t think it was that big of a deal,” Ward said. “It was just because of the stage it played out on. That’s all water under the bridge. Like a major league umpire, you make the call and move on.”