Column: Things go bump in right for Bayern in Breeders’ Cup Classic

In a Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita on Saturday that was more pinball machine than horse race, at least six significant things happened.

•Bayern won, giving his owner, Kaleem Shah, 60% of the richest thoroughbred purse of the year, $5 million.

•His trainer, Bob Baffert, won his 11th Breeders’ Cup race and his first Classic.

Shared Belief, the unbeaten betting favorite, didn’t win.

•California Chrome, the crowd favorite, didn’t win.

A crowd of 61,114, added to Friday’s 37,205, made it the best-ever for a Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita since the event went to two days. The total was 98,319.

•A good portion of that crowd, especially the connections of Shared Belief, left the premises angry.

The story of this prestigious race was expected to be the showdown between 3-year-old stars Shared Belief and California Chrome. Shared Belief had been injured and held out of the Triple Crown season. His record was 7-0. California Chrome had won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, then faded a bit in two races after that, including the Belmont.

Simple story, right?

Settle it head-to-head on the race track. Or maybe see if other late bloomers, such as Bayern or Tonalist, should edge into that conversation.

But this is horse racing, where nothing is simple and never will be.

They sent the horses to the gate, the crowd roared in anticipation, the gates opened and all hell broke loose. Shortly thereafter, fingers started pointing in all directions.

Bayern, ridden by Martin Garcia and leaving out of the No. 7 post position, stumbled in his first step out, broke lots of dirt loose and veered left ....

... directly into Shared Belief, in the No. 6 post.

Garcia quickly got Bayern straightened out and off and running.

“The thing about Bayern, his athleticism, he is just so handy on his feet,” Baffert said.

While Bayern was being handy on his feet and Shared Belief, under Mike Smith, appeared to be trying to collect himself, Toast Of New York, from the No. 9 spot, either dished out or received a good bang from Shared Belief.

The first 100 yards of this race were a rugby scrum. X Box should duplicate it and sell it.

Smith, a Hall of Fame jockey and the winningest rider in Breeders’ Cup history with 21 victories, said, “I was never able to get comfortable after getting hit at the break. I kept getting bounced all the way around the turn and Moreno kept getting out and bumped through the backside.”

When the pinball machine finally became a race, Bayern took over, Toast Of New York came within a nose of running him down at the wire and California Chrome came within a neck of catching Toast of New York.

They were the 1-2-3. Bayern returned a nice $14.20, $8 and $5.20. Toast of California brought $18 and $10.80 for second and California Chrome returned $5.40 for third.

Immediately after the horses crossed the finish line, the stewards’ inquiry sign went up.

The massive crowd around the winner’s circle paced, speculated and grumbled. The crowd was restless and appeared confused. They should have known better. This is horse racing. That’s what it does to its customers. Confuses the heck out of them.

Smith and Shared Belief had weaved through the obstacle course to finish fourth. Tonalist, the Belmont winner who had wrecked California Chrome’s Triple Crown chances, was 11th after a mile, in the 11/4-mile race, and somehow managed to get home fifth.

They were both conceivably in play, because the first two finishers had been involved in early race bumping. The stewards could have taken down both Bayern and Toast Of New York and given the crowd a popular 1-2-3 of California Chrome, Shared Belief and Tonalist.

In the 10 minutes of waiting, there was that buzz, and much more, in the crowd.

But then, the announcement came. The three stewards, Scott Chaney, Kim Sawyer and Tom Ward, had ruled the finish would stay as is.

They issued a statement that said, “After speaking with patrol judges and riders involved, it was our unanimous decision that, pursuant to CHRB Rule 1699, the incident occurred in a part of the race where the horses interfered with were not cost the opportunity to place where they reasonably expected to finish.”

Ah, good old CHRB rule 1699. The translation seems simple: It happened so early in the race that the fouled horses had a chance to get back in the mix and win. And whose “reasonable expectation” of finish was that?

Old Rule 1699 seems to make all the trainers’ talk about the importance of a good start just so much claptrap. It also brings into question why racing spends hours and hours and millions of dollars on staging made-for-TV shows at big races that feature drawing numbers of starting positions out of hats.

Also worth pondering is why Smith would say that the mess at the start “cost him the race,” when the stewards of the richest race in North America have ruled, in essence, that the start doesn’t matter.

Baffert said he thought, when the inquiry sign went up, that it was about the No. 9 horse, Toast Of New York.

“The 9 came over and just crushed everybody,” he said. “There was probably more going on. The 9 was doing more crushing back there than we did.”

Shared Belief’s trainer, Jerry Hollendorfer, and his longtime assistant, Dan Ward, heard the ruling and stalked off.

Hollendorfer, a man of few words, had exactly that.

“You saw what happened,” he said.

Ward said a few words too, none printable.

Bayern’s owner, Shah, said that he had been stricken with a painful sciatic nerve problem this week.

“As soon as [Bayern] hit the wire,” Shah said, “it automatically cured itself.”

Stewards might reverse that cure, but Shah is probably safe.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com

Twitter: @DwyreLATimes.