If it was excused before, it should be excused every time? The tweet itself is actually defending whats going on with Masochistic. He established precedent with that history lesson.

I could be wrong, but I don't think guys like Whittingham or a Bill Mott are running their debuters way over the limit on Ace.

Sure, Masochistic got a bizarre ride in his debut. And trainers have every right to run debuters who are way short or poorly meant.

However, you have to draw the line at 'nobbling'

If you're going to run a horse with the intent of trying to lose the race, and the jockey is going to give a ride that suggests the intent is trying to lose. That's fine. Just don't compound the shadiness of it by being over the limit for a Tranq.

Of course, this whole situation probably stays under the radar if not for the stunningly brazen placement of where Masochistic was placed in his 2nd career start.

Anyone familiar with modern bookmaking in the Internet age, understands the high limits and caps books offer on races at CD on Derby day.

Should be fun to see if this can be even better with Ron Ellis now training

He will try to get him into the malibu

Somehow I get the feeling that AC cashed a lot more on Derby Day than the $10K he was fined.

I would hope he made a lot more for that type of crookery. This was cold, calculating fraud. Derby Day ? Some of the biggest mutuel pools around. There was no accidents here. I knew something was wrong when I watched the race live.

Usually you are watching for Performance Enhancing Drugs, not the opposite. Ace is like Xanax and I've used it for years especially when shipping horses, sales, breeding and relocations. It's not good for good racing performances, it's a detriment. Imagine yourself trying to run a race with a few Xanax's in you. You're not exactly sharp.

As far as horse welfare, this is probably less dangerous than the opposite, however still does have dangers. 40 times sounds like a lot but with low thresholds, is not as big as it seems. The horse was most likely fine but not able to run to his ability. It wasn't like he was drunk or stoned, but he wasn't able to run as he may have. I'm more against the PED stuff, where a horse is "juiced" for a race. that is more dangerous.

I think the most compelling issue is that the horse-playing public who follow the races all know this was crookery. We hate this stuff. Whether we won or lost, we hate this. I think I may have won on him because I thought it was a weird move for AC to ship and run in this race. It was just a hunch.

I'd toss him 10 years. Fines are just to get money for the Racing Commission budget. The fine amount depends on how much money you have now and you can be assured they look at bank accounts and assets before they assess fines. Suspensions affect future earnings.

Guys holding horses and trainers not running fit horses are something that has always been there and always will. Zito, Mott, Shug with FTS's. Pletcher with FTS's, ready to go. That's fine. Also "Prep" races. It's been around forever. Drugs make it different. Apparently AC didn't think the jockey could do a good job convincing the crowd.

They got to toss some of these people.