i just realised that in the cart before the ponies, all the other foals are participating in the race with their older sister/parents whereas diamond tiara is with her butler.
whilst all the other fillies ride with a family member, diamond tiara rides with her butler.
the derby does not require the presence of a parent or an older sibling; any "older pony" would be fine. but because everypony else (i've attached an image from the Wiki for reference) seems to look like their partner, we can guess that they are all older siblings or parents.
now it doesn't look like randolph and diamond have a particularly close relationship (she shoves him aside and takes credit for his work in twilight time), and because he's the family butler, he probably ended up joining in the derby where her parents could not.
but why can't her parents join? the derby appears to be a pretty big event for ponyville. perhaps filthy rich was busy doing some business stuff but spoiled rich is the head of the school board (crusaders of the lost mark). since the school was promoting it and there are school children in the race, surely it would look good for spoiled rich to join in on this race, if not for diamond tiara's wellbeing and happiness.
so i thought it just a bit sad that diamond tiara had to race with her butler (an employee who has no real relationship with her) whereas everyone else got to race with someone that they (presumably) love.
i don't know, maybe i'm looking for too much into this... what do you guys think?
i was watching made in manehattan (season 5) and this background pony looked familiar... i feel like it doesnt FULLY make sense for him to grow so much in the time in between this and the school (season 8) but like.... timeline is already kinda a nebulous thing in mlp, so........ SANDBAR IS THAT YOU
Starlight Glimmer, unless you're retconing the death of the Blue Lantern Corps, I'm not interested in your retcon. Let's save Equestria. Oh what a lovely day.