Comment on this story
LOS ANGELES — In 2021, horse trainer Bob Baffert faced ban from his sport and national ridicule after his Kentucky Derby-winning horse Medina Spirit failed a post-race drug test. It was a scandal that put drug offenses and dead horses in the headlines and Baffert in the crosshairs.
Meanwhile, Baffert received a call from the Palm Beach area code. It was former President Donald Trump.
Baffert later recalled that Trump asked him what happened to Medina Spirit. By this point, Baffert had given up his earlier denials that the horse had been given anything that would have triggered a trial. So he recited to Trump his new credo – that the horse’s body contained only picograms of the substance, the result of an ointment used to treat a rash.
Baffert is used to dealing with local horse reporters, he told Trump. But this was the first time he had come under fire in the national media – and on Saturday Night Live, where the coach had recently been mocked. He found a sympathetic audience in the ex-president, who mused that “people can be evil” and offered him advice on how to proceed: “You know, nothing just happened. Just get on with your work and keep your head up.”
Baffert, who’s known for battling with regulators, probably didn’t need advice on dogged persistence. But in the two years since that conversation, he’s actually struck a Trump-esque slur. And when he competes at Preakness National Treasure on Saturday, Baffert, after serving a string of suspensions for the Medina Spirit violation, is likely to make his return to the Triple Crown stage more powerful and defiant than ever – albeit if his sport faltered by another catastrophic main event.
Baffert has described himself as a victim of “abandonment culture,” lamenting what he describes as the unfair downfall of his career while working to lift bans and suspensions in Kentucky, New York and elsewhere. He mostly failed to win in court, but the campaign of attrition seems to have worn out his most vocal critics. And despite his claims that he was ruined, Baffert’s business thrived thanks to his loyal base: thoroughbred owners who have given him a near-monopoly over elite racing in his home state of California. Now he comes in Pimlico to a sport that is in an existential crisis and divided by stalled efforts to enact state regulation of the sport.
In interviews, Baffert’s lead attorney, Clark Brewster, complained of unfair courts and regulators and claimed that Baffert was made a scapegoat by a thoroughbred racing movement to enforce federal oversight of drug violations. “Many people were calling for stronger enforcement of horse racing from a drug standpoint, and after the Derby when the lab found 21 picograms in the urine – Eureka!” said Brewster, referring to the amount of betamethasone found in the Medina Spirit sample became.
“Baffert was just so iconic that everyone wanted to take a shot, but no one wanted to write the article that was like, ‘You know what? That was really overkill,” Brewster added.
The attorney initially promised that a reporter would visit Baffert at his barn near San Diego before the trainer left for the Preakness in Maryland. However, he later said Baffert was unavailable for a meeting or phone interview because the trainer was “completely attuned to the details and final preparation of the Pimlico horses.”
“The Science” take over
When Medina Spirit tested positive for betamethasone, an anti-inflammatory, it was Baffert’s fifth positive drug test in 13 months and 30th in four decades of racing. He blamed a known culprit: “science.”
“That’s the one thing about this sport — you can play by the rules and still get in trouble because they don’t have the science,” Baffert later testified.
After the derby, Baffert went on a press tour, blaming this science as well as a conspiracy against him. However, he insisted that he had never given the horse betamethasone or any other ointment. But his longtime vet had documented him taking Otomax, a drug containing betamethasone, on the horse.
Baffert’s alternate stories contributed to the decision to ban him, Churchill Downs racecourse president Mike Anderson later testified. “It just seemed like a lack of understanding of what was being given to his horse on race day or the day before race day,” Anderson said.
Baffert’s suspensions are over; He is eligible to enter a horse in the Belmont Stakes in New York in June to round out the Triple Crown series. But his fight isn’t over, including an ongoing lawsuit against Churchill Downs and an appeal to the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission.
In the court filings, Baffert expressed concern about the impact of the penalties on his company. In affidavits, he claimed that the two-year ban from the Derby, which saw two of Baffert’s horses begin their journey to the Triple Crowns, “will effectively put me out of business.”
But that certainly wasn’t the case in California, where he has long been an influence on the industry. The citizens there called on the racing authorities to impose a longer ban on Baffert. “Mr. “Bob Baffert and the Kentucky Derby are not on the agenda,” said one commissioner, and the industry stayed loyal to him. Notably, that included Medina Spirit owner Amr Zedan.
The Saudi billionaire testified in Baffert’s defense, calling Baffert’s barn “basically the Beverly Hills Hotel and, if you will, the Four Seasons of horses.” And he was among the owners of horses at a race at Santa Anita Park near Los Angeles in February that clearly demonstrated Baffert’s dominance: 14 of the 16 horses nominated and all four horses that ended up taking part were Baffert trainees. Baffert made about $9.7 million from North American racing for his owners in 2022, a modest year by his standards but only $500,000 less than in 2019, the last year before the pre-scandal pandemic.
While Baffert dominated his competition in California, his attorneys attempted to reshape his legacy in court. In the court filing, his attorneys recorded only “fully confirmed positive medication results” and only those since 2005 — nine by their count, not 30. They reduced the death toll attributed to him even more drastically. The Washington Post noted in 2021 that 74 horses had died in Baffert’s care in California and that his horses had the highest per-start mortality rate among the state’s top trainers. In court filings, however, Baffert’s team cited an obscure database, which recorded only a few deaths in recent years and was operated by a nonprofit in Kentucky, to put the Baffert death toll at five.
Baffert’s actual tally is up by at least three since his last derby, records show. Medina Spirit died of a heart attack in December 2021. Then last July, a two-year-old horse named Rapacious was euthanized after falling on his back while exercising. And in January, Alsalam, a 3-year-old Zedan child, was euthanized after a workout. The veterinary notes describing Alsalam’s death state: “Unfortunately stopped and taken away.”
No autopsy was performed. Amanda Drummond, an official with the California Horse Racing Board, said it was because Alsalam died in an equine hospital. The board is “moving ahead with a rule” that would require autopsies in such cases, Drummond said.
Brewster called the Post’s count “wrong” and said it was unfair to monitor all deaths in Baffert’s care. In many cases, he said, “it has nothing to do with training — it has to do with natural events that occur in all animals and can result in injury or death.”
Shortly before leaving office, Trump signed legislation creating the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, a regulatory body to oversee drug rules in sport.
But their anti-doping efforts have stalled, largely due to legal challenges from the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, an industry group that includes racehorse owners and trainers. HISA is now scheduled to go into effect on Monday, two days after the preakness.
HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus said in an interview on Thursday that she was “very confident” the agency would not be further delayed by last-minute legal efforts. Lazarus said HISA will start every coach from scratch in the prosecution and punishment of drug violations.
“I would say to any coach who has maintained their innocence and feels they have been mistreated by the system: now is the opportunity to show that you are doing things right,” said Lazarus.
Arthur Hancock III, a Kentucky breeder, is among the horsemen who helped enforce the law. After the derby fatalities, he expressed pessimism about whether the sport can finally be cleaned up. Churchill Downs suspended a trainer from two of the horses indefinitely and said in a statement that while the deaths were “anomalies,” they were “unacceptable.”
Hancock said some riders felt “they are cheating more now than ever” amid an enforcement vacuum. “Status quo, business as usual — I mean, that’s how it looks to me,” Hancock said.
Monty Roberts, a retired horse trainer who has struggled with Baffert for years, expressed hope that the sport will be governed more strictly under the new authority. In that case, he said he welcomes Baffert’s return.
“I would love it if he could just compete with anyone on a clean basis,” Roberts said. “Because then you would see how good he is. The way it is now, he wins a race and you say, ‘Oh, I wonder what kind of horse that is.’ ”
Comments are closed.