I suspect that jockey James McDonald is cheat.

The Stewards do too.

They are all over him like a rash.

The sudden stipes focus on McDonald is no accident, or coincidence.

It’s all about snow.

And mobile phones, and gambling, and double dealing, and ducking for cover, and throwing wolves dressed as lambs to the lions.

When you’re out of the trenches and running, and the bullets are flying, it’s every man for himself and may the best man win.

“Look out for Number One. If you don’t, no one else will” the Brain famously said.

“If a man is dumb, someone is going to get the best of him, so why not you? If you don’t, you’re as dumb as he is.”

This is about is two competing teams, and who are going to be the last men left standing.

It won’t be James McDonald.

Don’t you worry about that.

This is the Stewards report from Randwick today.

This is what J-Mac did on Threeood.

How did he ever imagine that he would get away with it?

Who does McDonald owe?

And why on earth does he think he’s not going to have to pay?

They come round the turn, and J-Mac is back near last on the $2.90 favourite.

Look familiar?

It should, because it is.

Guess who is up front, getting away with murder?

Avdulla.

Do you reckon J-Mac is going to come to the outside when he should?

Is the Pope a Jew?

McDonald steers the fave away from clear air, and back in behind them.

Right up the pack’s arse.

Strange tactic isn’t it?

He stays there too.

That was the 400 mark you saw above.

This one is the 300.

The one below is the 200.

J-Mac is still there, doing nothing.

Or doing a whole lot, if you know what I mean.

I don’t suspect that J-Mac is a cheat anymore.

I know he is.

We are past the 150 pole now.

He’s still there.

J-Mac doesn’t want to go.

Why?

Because he knows if he does, his horse will beat Avdulla’s.

McDonald doesn’t want that.

We are well inside the hundred now.

J-Mac awakens from his long slumber, and hooks the fave out.

It is far too late to catch Avdulla on the leader, just as the great jockey with the clock and distance calculator inside his head knew it would be.

D’uh stupid.

That’s why he waited so long.

The fave steams home under double wraps.

It gets beaten by as far as you’d expect, but should have won by panels.

Sadly for whoever the Brain is, Avdulla does too.

That’s racing, and the reason that Ben Currie’s fraud charges are a crock, and bound to collapse in a heap.

You can fix races, but there’s always some bloke that you left out of the fix who is trying.

Maybe anyway.

Wasn’t it weird how Jason Collett was able to push out under Hughie Bowman so easily on the eventual winner.

Why, it was just like Avdulla did on Nash in that Highway Handicap two weeks ago, and do you know the funny thing?

A Gerry Harvey owned horse was involved in both.

I’m sure it’s a mere coincidence.

The only thing for certain is that James McDonald has just thrown away his whole bright glittering career.

Did you know that his missus works as a tipster for the corporate bookmaker Beteasy?

Funny that.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,

Or swing the spotlight away to melt the snow anyway.

Everywhere you look you see bright lights and stars.

Never let them blind you.

Born in New York City in 1882, Arnold Rothstein was a businessman and kingpin of New York’s Jewish mob. He’s also legendary for trying to fix the 1919 World Series in what’s known as the Chicago Black Sox Scandal. One thing that stands out about Rothstein, a.k.a. Big Al, is that he wasn’t just a brutal mob boss, but rather someone who understood the intricacies of business and ran the mob like a corporation.

“[He] had the most remarkable brain. He understood business instinctively, and I’m sure that if he’d been a legitimate financier he would have been just as rush as he became with his gambling and other rackets he ran,”

said Meyer Lansky, a.k.a. the Mob’s Accountant.

Thanks to his business acumen and mathematical brain, Rothstein accumulated a fortune worth an estimated $10 million, or approximately $140 million in when adjusted for inflation.

But long before he became New York’s richest and most important crime figure, Rothstein was a high school dropout trying to make his way through gambling. That being said, let’s discuss Rothstein’s backstory, his gambling abilities, rise in the crime world, underground casinos, and demise – including how he was shot after a high stakes poker game.

Unlike many mob kingpins, who started out on the streets, Arnold Rothstein was raised in an upper middle class family in Manhattan. His father, Abraham, was a successful merchant whose honest reputation earned him the nickname “Abe the Just.”

Arnold veered from this path early on since he got poor grades and was more interested in gambling as a child. Math was the only school subject that Rothstein excelled in, and it served him well in betting.

In a piece called Arnold Rothstein and the 1919 World Series Fix by Victoria Vanderveer, he was asked when he became a gambler.

“I always gambled. I can’t remember when I didn’t,” Rothstein responded. “Maybe I gambled just to show my father he couldn’t tell me what to do, but I don’t think so. I think I gambled because I loved the excitement.”

Arnold resisted his father’s authority and resented the attention his parents gave to his older brother, Harry, who was studying to become a rabbi. This is one reason why Arnold refused to stop shooting dice after his father caught him and scolded him for it.

After dropping out of high school, Rothstein didn’t have the bankroll to pursue his true passion of gambling.

This forced him to take up a career as a cigar salesman. But as Leo Katcher describes in a biography on Rothstein called The Big Bank Roll, Arnold never lost sight of his true goal.

“The cigar salesman made a good living. He lived frugally, did not dissipate,” writes Katcher. “Each week the roll in his pocket grew a little thicker. He knew he could never attain his ultimate aim by simple economies, but these could start him on his way. He didn’t like long range projects. He was essentially a short term, quick turnover man.”

Eventually, Rothstein sold enough cigars and saved enough money to accumulate a $2,000 bankroll. Worth over $28,000 today, Arnold felt that he had enough to become a professional gambler and quit his salesman job.

It didn’t take Rothstein long to experience success in his new career as a professional gambler. He was willing to bet on anything as long as he felt like the odds were in his favor.

Rothstein’s ability to quickly calculate odds and work through complicated math made him a fortune. And like a shark smelling blood in the water, Rothstein would take advantage of any weak minded gamblers he came across.

“Look out for Number One. If you don’t, no one else will.” Rothstein said. “If a man is dumb, someone is going to get the best of him, so why not you? If you don’t, you’re as dumb as he is.”

The HBO show Boardwalk Empire portrays Rothstein as a patient man who was willing to wait as long as it took to find a favorable opportunity.

“I’ve made my living, Mr. [Nucky] Thompson, in large part as a gambler,” Rothstein said. “Some days I make 20 bets. Some days I make none. Weeks, sometimes months in fact, when I make no bets at all because there simply is no play. So I wait, plan, marshal my resources and when I finally see an opportunity and there is a bet to make, I bet it all.”

Through his combination of patience and mathematical abilities, Rothstein soon became a millionaire through gambling.

He carried large amounts of cash with him so that he could cover any favorable bets that arose. Said to always have at least $20,000 cash on him, Rothstein earned the nickname The Big Bankroll.

By age 28, Rothstein moved to Manhattan’s Tenderloin district, which was known for brothels, underground gambling, and corrupt officials.

Rothstein fit right in and quickly opened an underground casino in the Tenderloin. The high end casino was a big success, generating over $10,000 a day in the 1910s.

This allowed Arnold to continue investing in more casinos and brothels. He also bought a large stake in a racetrack at Havre de Grace, Maryland, where he’s believed to have fixed races and gained insider information.

Through a wide network of informants that he paid very well, Rothstein received tips on horses and races that the average bettor didn’t have access to.

While never convicted, Rothstein is believed to have orchestrated the infamous Black Sox Scandal of 1919, where Chicago White Sox players were paid to throw the World Series.

When the heavily favored White Sox lost to the Cincinnati Reds 5 games to 3, speculation became rampant that the mob boss fixed the Series.

One version of the story suggests that former bantam boxing champion Abe Attell acted as a middleman between Rothstein and the White Sox players.

Another version claimed that gambler Joseph Sullivan approached Rothstein about a scheme to fix the World Series. Arnold quickly rejected the offer, but later reconsidered after hearing Attell’s proposal.

As writer Michael Alexander concludes, Rothstein thought that he could work with both Sullivan and Attell while still covering his own involvement.

Whatever the case, Rothstein, now known as The Fixer, was called to testify before a grand jury in Chicago. Arnold assumed the identity of an innocent businessman, chastising the courtroom for viewing him with prejudice.

“Gentleman, what kind of courtesy is this? What kind of city is this?” Rothstein questioned. “I came here voluntarily and what happens? A gang of thugs bar my path with cameras as though I was a notorious person, a criminal even.”

Aside from lecturing the grand jury, Rothstein also said that he had nothing to do with the Black Sox Scandal.

“The whole thing started when Attell and some other cheap gamblers decided to frame the Series and make a killing,” Arnold told the courtroom. “The world knows I was asked in on the deal and my friends know how I turned it down flat. I don’t doubt that Attell used my name to put it over. That’s been done by smarter men than Abe. But I was not in on it, would not have gone into it under any circumstances and did not bet a cent on the Series after I found out what was under way.”

It helped Rothstein’s cause when signed confessions by White Sox players Eddie “Knuckles” Cicotte, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and Claude “Lefty” Williams disappeared.

Katcher writes that the prosecution tried to get the players to repeat their confessions on the stand, only to have them plead the Fifth Amendment.

With no confessions, the state didn’t have enough to indict Rothstein, and they were forced to deny that he had any involvement with the scandal.

Arnold did admit that he won less than $100,000 from betting on the Reds, but Katcher claims that the sum was actually $350,000.

In addition to being accused of fixing horse races at his Maryland track, Rothstein is also believed to have cheated at the 1921 Travers Stakes.

Owner of a racehorse named Sporting Blood, Rothstein allegedly paid trainer Sam Hildreth to help him drive up Sporting Blood’s odds.

Hildreth entered a champion horse named Grey Lag, which pushed Sporting Blood’s odds up to 3 1. Based on additional information that the horse with the second best odds was off her feed, Rothstein bet $150,000 on Sporting Blood to win.

Grey Lag was scratched from the race shortly after this, and Sporting Blood went on to win, earning Rothstein a $450,000 profit. Much like the Black Sox Scandal, nobody could prove that Rothstein did anything wrong.