Welcome mat out for Baffert
Trainer Bob Baffert was barred from Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby after Medina Spirit failed a drug test in May shortly after winning the 147th running of America’s greatest horse race. The New York Racing Association has renewed its efforts to bar him from its circuit.
So how is Baffert able to run eight horses for millions of dollars in purse money Friday and Saturday in the Breeders’ Cup World Championships at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club in Southern California?
The trainer has friends in high places: on the Breeders’ Cup board, to be precise.
Baffert will saddle horses for six of those board members at Del Mar. Six more either own horses in Baffert’s stable or stand stallions that he once trained.
So it was hardly a surprise, after a review and a board vote last month, that they decided that Baffert could compete in the Breeders’ Cup with the horses some of them own.
What did that review entail? Did any board members with financial ties to Baffert — all but two of 14 — recuse themselves from deciding his fate?
You are not allowed to know.
Drew Fleming, the Breeders’ Cup president and CEO, declined to answer detailed questions from The New York Times, as did individual board members.
Instead the organization put Baffert on what amounts to the “double secret probation” that Dean Wormer handed down to the Delta fraternity in the movie “Animal House.”
Baffert’s horses, the organization said, will be tested more often than his competitors’. They will have extra eyes surveilling them.
And if one of them tests positive for anything, the Breeders’ Cup board members will drop the hammer on Baffert.
They promise.
How did horse racing get here? Again?
Start with a culture of doping that has been pervasive for decades, then throw in a lack of infrastructure (and will) to make and enforce rules.
Finally, add decision-making driven by greed rather than concern for the health and safety of the horses, the riders and the public.
Outside the Triple Crown events, horse racing makes national headlines only when tragedy and scandal are involved.
There has been a lot of both recently — 30 dead horses in a season at Santa Anita Park in California and federal indictments accusing more than two dozen trainers and veterinarians from Florida to New York of doping their animals.
By the way, all but a few of them have pleaded guilty.
On Saturday, Medina Spirit will compete in the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, the marquee and final race of the two-day festival.
Whether he wins or loses, horseplayers and casual sports fans alike will wonder if he ran drug-free.
The colt crossed the finish line first in the Derby on May 1, only to flunk a postrace test for a corticosteroid that is prohibited on race day. That result has since been contested in state and federal courts and will be for perhaps years to come.