The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baffert in spotlight for wrong reasons
Even though Bob Baffert isn’t at Pimlico Race Course this week, his shadow hangs over the Preakness, the Triple Crown and horse racing.
This should have been another celebration of Baffert, the face of the sport with two Triple Crown triumphs on his resume, coming off an upset win at the Kentucky Derby and looking for a record eighth Preakness victory. Instead, Derby winner Medina Spirit failing a postrace drug test for the steroid betamethasone has put Baffert and the sport in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
“The whole atmosphere here has changed,” rival trainer and friend D. Wayne Lukas said Wednesday. “The enthusiasm, the feel of excite- ment is not here. That’s what’s bad for the industry right there.”
Lukas tried to talk Baffert into traveling to Baltimore for the Preakness to saddle Medina Spirit and Concert Tour. Instead, Baffert’s horses are under the watchful eye of assistant trainer Jimmy Barnes and Maryland Racing Commission officials who set conditions for addi- tional testing and monitor- ing for them to be allowed to run Saturday.
If three rounds of testing come back clean, Medina Spirit will likely be favored in the Preakness and, if successful, would be two-thirds of the way to Baffert’s third Triple Crown in six years — albeit with a giant asterisk.
“It certainly has altered the dynamic of the Preakness considerably,” NBC Sports analyst Randy Moss said. “It’s gone from a warm and fuzzy, feel-good story about a tena- cious $1,000 yearling who somehow defied the odds to win the Kentucky Derby into the depths of where no one in horse racing likes to see it go.”
Rather than Baffert hold- ing court outside the stakes barn at Pimlico in his trademark sunglasses and chatting with Lukas, it was Barnes tersely ending a short interview session after “no com- ment” replies when asked about his boss’s mindset and whether Medina Spirit was still being treated for a skin condition, which caused the horse to be given an anti- fungal ointment that Baffert said Tuesday was a possible source of the steroid.
Plenty of others, however, want to talk about the med- ication violation, Baffert’s fifth in a little over a year. Activist Marty Irby of Animal Wellness Action said “Baffert should be extraordi- narily alert to all substances that go into horses under his control” and recommended a zero-tolerance policy for drugging violations.
While this is not intentional doping with perfor- mance-enhancing drugs like the charges facing indicted trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro, it’s another blotch on Baffert’s record that in a best-case scenario shows his barn doesn’t pay close enough attention.
“The fact that he didn’t know and he didn’t mean for it to be in the horse, that doesn’t change for an instant the fact that it was in the horse,” said Dr. Mary Scollay, executive director of the Racing Medication & Testing Consortium.
Betamethasone, a ther- apeutic drug that can help horses’ joints, was also found in Baffert’s 2020 Kentucky Oaks-winning filly Gamine, who along with colt Charlatan tested positive for the painkiller lidocaine last year in Arkansas. Another Baffert-trained horse, Merneith, tested positive for a cough suppressant after racing July 25 at Del Mar in California. Baffert in November vowed to “do better,” hiring a veterinarian for extra oversight and saying, “I intend to do everything possible to ensure I receive no further medication complaints.”
Then one happened on horse racing’s biggest stage.
“Somehow, here we are again,” Moss said.
Lukas said Baffert has “been hit with some circumstances that are uncontrollable.” While Irby and others point to the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act that goes into effect in July 2022 as an opportunity to better police drugs, the 85-year-old Hall of Fame trainer thinks it should raise the threshold “to what’s realistic” for therapeutic medications above the 21 picograms Medina Spirit tested positive for.