I wish Vegas had given the public a shot at how long Rich Strike’s feel-good story remained a feel-good story. While there wasn’t a tack to Cancel Town in the first 15 minutes after the race, it got there during trainer Eric Reed’s 15 minutes of glory so my unders bet would have hit.
The trainer of the Kentucky Derby winning horse, who had the worst chances of the field and arrived late, basked in one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport for five days.
During an appearance on ESPN’s Behind the Lines — which should have set off Reed’s internal alarm — John Barr asked the coach about a derogatory tweet sent from Reed’s alleged Twitter account @daddyrabbit1964.
Uhh my boy you don’t know how your twitter account tweeted something incredibly gross and misogynistic? Or you don’t know how to tweet? However, he knows how to make his account private he has after getting Caught.
If that wasn’t your account, then why did Daily Racing Forum’s Marty McGee cite @daddyrabbit1964 as his source for the news that Rich Strike won’t be racing in The Preakness?
Reed should simply admit that he sent the tweet, embrace his status as a cult hero fighting for termination among Fox News people, and accept that his detractors/”haters” will likely always view him as the horse trainer who won the Derby by a Longshot and then got kicked in the face Archibald Whitman style through his own tweet.
By a guy whose alleged Twitter bio reads: “Horse trainer and Reagan conservative. Fantasy football fanatic, owner of Mercury Equine Center.”
It was probably a good bet that your run-of-the-mill horse trainer from Kentucky was an avid MAGA clown, but Vegas didn’t give us a chance either.
Rich Strike’s jockey was suspended for careless driving
If you were to ask me a multiple choice question as to why Rich Strike’s glorious ride would not age well, from A. The horse was juiced, B. The unknown trainer is terminated, or C. The jockey is suspended for careless riding, i would have chosen option A. I didn’t know it was almost D. All of the above.
No, Rich Strike had nothing in his system that we know of, but jockey Sonny Leon received a careless driving suspension in Ohio, his third ban for that specific violation since the crash and fifth overall over the period Yahoo Sports.
There are many maneuvers that constitute careless riding, and most of them result from disturbing another horse, intentionally or otherwise. (Think about riding a competitor into the rails.) Leon’s agent, Jeff Perrin, excused it as “aggressive” riding and said jockeys are being forced to make “judgment calls”.
OK, sure, whatever. What about the other suspensions? per Kentucky Journal Courierreceived by the jockey for “submitting false and altered physical examination documents to the stewards in West Virginia and causing visible injuries to one of his Mahoning Valley mounts by abuse of the whip?
That doesn’t sound like judgment, but I’m not sure we should have expected well-vetted candidates from Captain Ass Clown with the looser Twitter fingers.
Next to horse racing fans, the biggest loser in all of this is Rich Strike. He didn’t do anything wrong, he doesn’t have the mental capacity — or conflicting thumbs — to fire off problematic tweets.
Now he doesn’t race in the Preakness, his owner is a soon-to-be-twitter-verified donkey, and his jockey is a series rule violator. The whole world actually loves Milkshake Duck.
If a mount was as broken as Rich Strike’s staff, the trainers would have put them out to pasture a long time ago.
