I wish Vegas would’ve given the public odds on how long Rich Strike’s feel-good story remained feel-good. While it didn’t take a turn to Cancel Town in the first 15 minutes after the race, it did get there during trainer Eric Reed’s 15 minutes of fame, so my unders bet would’ve hit.
The trainer of the Kentucky Derby winning horse, who had the worst odds in the field and was a late addition, basked in one of the greatest upsets in the history of the sport for all of five days.
During an appearance on ESPN’s Behind the Lines — which should’ve set off Reed’s internal alarm — John Barr asked the trainer about a derogatory tweet sent from Reed’s alleged Twitter account, @daddyrabbit1964.
Uhh, my guy, you don’t know how your Twitter account tweeted something incredibly distasteful and misogynistic? Or you don’t know how to tweet? He knows how to make his account private, though, which he did after getting Gotcha’d.
Also, if that wasn’t your account, then why did Marty McGee, of Daily Racing Forum, cite @daddyrabbit1964 as his sources for the news that Rich Strike won’t be racing in The Preakness?
Reed should just admit that he sent the tweet, embrace his status as a cancel-fighting cult hero among the Fox News crowd, and accept that his detractors/“haters” will likely always view him as that horse trainer who won the Derby with a longshot and then got kicked in the face Archibald Whitman-style by his own tweet.
There’s really not much more to expand upon with 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 a raving MAGA clown, but Vegas didn’t give us odds on that either.
Rich Strike’s jockey suspended for careless riding
If you were to give me a multiple-choice question as to why Rich Strike’s glorious ride wouldn’t age well, out of A. The horse was juiced, B. The unknown trainer gets canceled, or C. The jockey gets suspended for careless riding, I would’ve picked option A. Little did I know it was almost D. All of the above.
No, Rich Strike didn’t have anything in his system that we know of, but jockey Sonny Leon did catch a suspension for careless riding in Ohio, his third ban for that specific violation since the fall and fifth overall in that time period, according to Yahoo Sports.
There are many maneuvers that constitute careless riding, and most of them stem from interfering with another horse, deliberate or otherwise. (Think riding a competitor into the rail.) Leon’s agent, Jeff Perrin, excused it as “aggressive” riding and said jockeys are forced to make “judgment calls.”
OK, sure, whatever. How about the other suspensions, per the Kentucky Journal Courier, that the jockey received for “presenting false and altered documents from a physical examination to West Virginia stewards and for inflicting visible injuries on one of his Mahoning Valley mounts through misuse of the whip?”
Those don’t sound like judgment calls, but I’m not sure we should’ve expected well-vetted candidates from captain ass clown with the loose Twitter fingers.
The biggest loser in all of this, besides horse racing fans, is Rich Strike. He did nothing wrong, he doesn’t have the requisite mental capacity – or opposable thumbs — to fire off problematic tweets.
Now, he’s not racing in the Preakness, his owner is a soon-to-be-Twitter-verified jackass, and his jockey is a serial rules violator. The whole world loves Milkshake Duck, indeed.
If a mount was as broken as the staff around Rich Strike, trainers would’ve put them out to pasture a long time ago.