Eventually, The Prime Minister Wins : Horse racing: An inadvertent dead-heat call confuses the situation after the Goodwood Handicap.

The Prime Minister led from wire to wire Saturday at Santa Anita, but at the finish, Marquetry was alongside--and nobody knew how close. And nobody was saying, save for those with a vested interest and a viewing angle that seemed to support same.

For more than seven minutes, the “photo” sign glowed red and the mutuels on the tote board remained black.

Then track announcer Trevor Denman relayed the decision of the stewards: a dead-heat.

“It was horrifying,” Pete Pederson, the senior steward who had told Denman, the mutuels and placing judges via a conference call.

Horrifying, because it was an error.

Pederson immediately realized what had happened. Twenty seconds later, Denman made the correction, announcing to the crowd that The Prime Minister had held on to win the $264,000 Goodwood Handicap, finishing less than an inch ahead of Marquetry, an even-money favorite, after 1 1/8 miles.

For seven minutes after crossing the finish line, jockey Chris McCarron remained aboard The Prime Minister and David Flores on Marquetry, both figuring there was a trip to the winner’s circle and a photo in their immediate future. For 20 seconds, they thought it was going to take two shots.

All the while, Pederson and two other stewards reviewed photos of the finish, determining whether to support the placing judges’ decision. “It took a long period of examination,” Pederson said. “One is in daylight (Marquetry) and one in the shadow (The Prime Minister, on the rail).

“It’s difficult to be positive on the finish.”

But necessary. And no one was more concerned about the miscommunication than Pederson. “I’ll tell you this, you try to reduce errors at the track, and when you make one, it’s awful,” he said. “And it was my error--not the track announcer, not anyone else. It was not the fault of anybody else but me.”

Pederson, who said he had been a steward for more than 40 years and who had been at Santa Anita since 1949, believes it is the first such error in a major race.

“You get errors, sometimes numbers going up incorrectly,” he said. “But not like this.”

“I think it’s the first time in the history of racing that’s happened,” McCarron said of the confusion.

It was a $152,300 victory for The Prime Minister, who had won $104,700 previously. It was his fifth victory in eight starts, the richest of which before Saturday had been in a $50,000 allowance race at Del Mar on Aug. 5.

This time he went the 1 1/8 miles in 1:47 4/5 and returned $6.60, $3.60 and $3 as a 3-1 second betting choice. Marquetry paid $2.40 and $2.40 and Pleasant Tap, with Laffit Pincay Jr., finished 4 1/2 lengths farther back and paid $2.80.

Marquetry had won the rich Hollywood Gold Cup at Hollywood Park and the New England Classic at Rockingham Park, N.H., American Championship Racing Series events in which he had beaten top horses.

He stalked The Prime Minister from the start, through moderate fractions of 23 1/2 seconds, :47 and 1:10 3/5.

McCarron quickly sent the 4-year-old son of Deputy Minister to the front, with Marquetry second. Flores had the favorite 1 1/2 lengths behind down the back stretch, two at the far turn and 1 1/2 again as they turned into the stretch.

The Prime Minister carried 115 pounds, four less than Marquetry.