Baffert revisited the Derby the next year, sending two top colts, Real Quiet and Indian Charlie, to Louisville. On Monday, Bell confirmed he helped with the search, adding Jimson weed has plagued California for years.. There were at least 39 trainers with more fatalities to their name than Baffert during that period. In a written decision, the stewards stated the CHRB has already ruled on this matter in its August 2018 closed hearing and had followed the law., However, the stewards suggested they would not have made the same decision as the CHRB: It is the Stewards opinion that had this Board of Stewards heard the Justify and Hoppertunity complaints prior to August 23, 2018 both horses would have been disqualified., Ruiss lawyers have since argued in court for the settlement to be rescinded because the stewards refused to make a decision on the merits., I remain convinced that justice has not yet been served, Vienna told The Post, and that hopefully the courts will resolve the matter., The rise and fall of Jorge Navarro, the alleged doping king of horse racing. "So now even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junky," Trump's statement read. The quest to find Jimson weed continued. And Madeline Auerbach, who later became a CHRB commissioner, had partnered with Baffert in thoroughbred breeding. It seems the biggest problem trainer Bob Baffert had during the running of the $300,000 San Felipe Stakes on Saturday was keeping his face covering over his nose. "[29][30] On September 10, 2021 Baffert was charged by NYRA for conduct detrimental to the best interests of racing. [24], On May 17, 2021, the New York Racing Association (NYRA) banned Baffert from entering Medina Spirit or any of his other horses in the 2021 Belmont Stakes or any other race at Belmont Park. Bob had the personality and he was honest. ), The records show Arthurs early decisions led to the CHRB veering off its usual course in its handling of the Justify case, beginning with his email to a testing coordinator that read, The scopolamine cases will be handled differently than usual., By the CHRBs own guidelines, the way forward was clear: If a second sample came back positive, the CHRB would file a complaint. Real Quiet won the race that year, and Baffert also finished third with Indian Charlie. Horse trainer Bob Baffert before the 2020 Breeders Cup at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky. Trainer Bob Baffert pets an outriders horse while watching workouts at Churchill Downs in April. To the newspaper, she. Bob Baffert has taken up more of my time than I ever should have had to deal with, Arthur said, before again coming to the defense of Bafferts treatment of his horses: He certainly puts the pedal to the metal, but he doesnt close his eyes. All of the drugs were legal, just not in the amounts found on race day. Hes won seven, more than anyone else in the 147-year history of the race. It didnt take Baffert long to dominate Rillito Park and Prescott Downs in Arizona. Nothing is held back.. The legal records, which draw from dozens of emails, memorandums and other materials that have not previously been made public, show how officials delayed action, contradicted their own plans and rewrote existing rules to Bafferts advantage. But the sports new governing authority will not take over until mid-2022. He paused, then added: Ive learned who my friends are.. Every investigation over the past 20 years has reached the same conclusion: no rules or regulations have been violated nor has there been any improper activity on Bobs part., Brewster also said that the vast majority of Bafferts drug-related violations, as tracked by ARCI, shouldnt be counted because they were too old or related to overages of otherwise-allowed drugs in a horse, which he dismissed as like coming to work with too much Advil in your system., Robertson said in an e-mail that [n]o one has done more for horse racing and is better for the sport than Bob Baffert, and he listed various awards the trainer has received, including being inducted into four separate Hall of Fames. In each instance, the death is investigated. Closing everything and moving forward is in Bobs best interest and the best interest of horse racing. Mr. Two months later, the PAC contributed $2,000 to Grays successful election committee. Arthur suggested the board retroactively apply it to the Justify case. His white hair, tinted glasses and accessibility make him a natural to promote the sport. As The Post reported in April, the Jockey Club, an industry group of top thoroughbred owners, then hired the same private agency, 5 Stones Intelligence, to probe suspected dopers. Gray said at the time that the bill also would increase the institutional knowledge of Californias central horse drug-testing lab. Hes always wanted to be a rock star and some people dont think racing should have one.. Unlike a normal day at the races, Bafferts fate will not be decided by a photo-finish camera or the actions of a jockey aboard a 1,000-pound animal. He tried his hand at substitute teaching before he started training horses full time. Baffert did not have a horse hit the board again in any of the Triple Crown races until 2009, when he trained Pioneerof The Nile to a second-place finish in the Derby. Drop dead while galloping, read a California Horse Racing Board vets account of the first horses death in November 2011. [7] Baffert became a 7-time winner of the Kentucky Derby in 2021 with Medina Spirit. All they show is contamination, and they have really put the trainers heads on the chopping blocks. The bold statement appeared to put Baffert on the right side of history: By the end of the year, President Donald Trump had signed into law the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, which promised to reform the sport. At first it was believed the substance came from a pain-relief patch that Bafferts longtime assistant Jimmy Barnes was wearing because of back pain. Does his love of the camera sometimes bite him? asked longtime owner and friend Mike Pegram. Scopolamine, Baedeker wrote, can be injected but very often is the result of feed or straw that has been contaminated with Jimson weed., Arthur had previously suggested he didnt consider Jimson weed contamination to be a serious threat, writing in a 2016 memo that the likelihood under our current procedures of getting a positive from environmental contamination is rather low. In an interview this week, Arthur said he meant that such incidences were infrequent but said that in California, if you have a scopolamine positive, its going to be associated with Jimson weed thats just the reality of it., On April 26, records show, Arthur emailed CHRB officials that he had talked to Bob and informed him the proceedings would not immediately interfere with Justifys Triple Crown schedule. However, Medina Spirit tested positive for the steroid betamethasone. On the morning of this years Kentucky Derby, he was going through his list of past Kentucky Derby winners and should-have-been winners, and dismissed Medina Spirit as not the best horse in the race. Things would have been so much simpler if the horse had not won the race. When the CHRB also decided to run DNA tests on the horses blood samples, the records show Arthur said the request would be a big deal and asked if they could wait until after the Preakness, which was 10 days away. In 2015, he trained American Pharoah, the first horse to win the Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978.. Bafferts attorney argued in court that the trainers May suspension by the New York Racing Assn. [18] Baffert responded by saying the situation "was like a cancel culture kind of a thing," a remark which earned him noticeable criticism from the press. A three-member hearing panel has made the decision to suspend Hall of Fame horse trainer Bob Baffert for one year, effective immediately, the New York Racing Association announced Thursday. Arthur called Bafferts blanket use of thyroxine troublesome and said at the meeting, I havent found an example of a barn that uses it in all their horses like Baffert does. Yet he determined that the drug wasnt to blame for the deaths. Bob Baffert wakes up most every day with one thing in mind, winning another Kentucky Derby. This America's different." pic . There have been so many false narratives that have come up and the hearing process isnt even done yet. In 1997 he won his first Kentucky Derby with Silver Charm. Other trainers seem to navigate just fine.. His reasoning was that Baffert also administered thyroxine to horses outside of Hollywood Park, where his horses did not suffer sudden deaths. Like Baffert, Hollendorfer is in the thoroughbred Hall of Fame. Bob Baffert Family, Parents The dark side of Bob Baffert's reign. Baffert, however, wouldnt change the outcome. We have a real conundrum to sort out, Arthur wrote in an email to top CHRB officials, explaining he believed a disqualification would be terribly unfair. More than a year earlier, the Association of Racing Commissioners International, which creates model rules for the sports various state bodies, had reclassified scopolamine from a 3/B to a 4/C drug. In raw numbers, most of Baffert's medication violations were for exceeding allowed amounts of authorized medications such as phenylbutazone, a pain medication commonly administered to horses. For every Baffert defender, you can find someone on the other side. Cherwa also contributes general interest stories from Florida. . California counts all fatalities of horses in a trainers care, including breakdowns during training, not just racing deaths. He married his second wife, Jill, a former television reporter based in Louisville, in 2002. If they didnt adopt those rules, the rules that prevail are the ones they adopted.. In February 2013, with Bafferts Hollywood Park sudden-death toll at six and Californias equine medical director, Rick Arthur, probing his barns operations, state legislation was introduced that would place term limits on Arthurs position, eventually forcing him out of a $309,000-a-year job. His attorney, let me just say, worked very, very hard, recalled former California Deputy Attorney General Jerald L. Mosley, who represented the state in attempting to uphold the suspension. The trainer was fined $2,500. The. And Noodles died May 22 of a non-exercise induced respiratory issue. Arthur and CHRB investigators inspected Bafferts barn, reviewed veterinary records and interviewed Baffert, who was flanked by an attorney. Instead of promptly filing a public complaint against Baffert, the CHRB kept the positive result secret while Arthur conducted a lengthy investigation. Baffert dedicated American Pharoah's win to Bobby. Churchill Downs announced that any points earned in the leadup to the Kentucky Derby by horses associated with a suspended trainer would not be counted a move that seemingly targets Hall of Famer Bob Baffert. The colt lost the Belmont Stakes after breaking poorly from the starting gate. Hollywood Park closed in 2013, and the saga of the dead horses there faded quickly from the headlines. But the scuttled test result remained secret until the New York Times reported it in 2019. But that number may drop to six if the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission disqualifies this years winner, Medina Spirit, for a medication violation, the trainers fifth since May 2020. . This pattern has bred frustration among some horsemen. By age 20, he had developed a reputation as a trainer and was hired by other trainers to run their stables. To me, whats in the best interest of the sport is not seeing anyone being dogpiled on.. Baffert won his first race as a thoroughbred trainer Jan. 28, 1979, saddling Flipper Star to a victory at Rillito in Arizona. CNN Hall of Fame horse trainer Bob Baffert will miss the Kentucky Derby for a second straight year after a federal judge denied his request to have a two-year ban by Churchill Downs Inc.. [27][28] On July 14 the suspension was reversed by U. S. Federal District Court Judge Carol Bagley Amon sitting in the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. Justify faced disqualification from his victory in the Santa Anita Derby that would cost his owners a partnership of wealthy interests their share of the $600,000 first-place purse. It hurts racing., In the same speech, Baffert agitated for the continued use of Lasix, which is popular with trainers but increasingly criticized as a potential performance-enhancer and masking agent for other drugs. What we knew about horses you could put in a thimble. [15], At a news conference on May 9, Baffert initially said that Medina Spirit was never administered betamethasone. According to data provided by the California Horse Racing Board and supplemented by The Times research, the trainer has had 75 horses die since 2000 either racing, training, or by illness or non-exercise accidents. Theres one thing that I will say positive about Bob is that he is a horseman. But hes Bob, he has to speak his mind.. Baffert said the horse was off the drug for 18 days before the race. Bafferts lawyer called as a defense witness Arthur, who testified that his handling of the case was the fault of Californias cumbersome regulatory process. He declared, I considered this a horse poisoning, not a horse drugging., After the hearing, Santa Anitas Board of Stewards, a three-person panel that rules on drug cases, dismissed the complaints. [14] It was Baffert's fifth violation in 13 months. LOS ANGELES In 2018, as star trainer Bob Baffert led his thoroughbred Justify to the Triple Crown, California regulators embarked on a secret effort to exonerate Baffert after the horses positive test for a banned substance, according to confidential records obtained by The Washington Post that fully detail the saga for the first time. Its not uncommon to find trainers who dont understand medications and how different medications work, Arthur said. In response to public records requests in Maryland, New Jersey and Kentucky, officials told The Post that they did not maintain digital records of horse deaths by trainer, instead keeping reams of copies of reports. There is nothing new here, he wrote. Baffert failed in multiple attempts in Kentucky to overturn the track's ban or the start of his suspension, which began April 4. Officials worked secretly to clear Bob Bafferts Justify amid 2018 Triple Crown run, records show. LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Testimonies have begun in the case of horse trainer Bob Baffert against Churchill Downs. In the next six months, three of his horses tested positive for banned or excessive substances four times in California, Arkansas and Kentucky. Some of my friends swear that I'm actually a conservative Democrat. Some would argue, though, that if it makes a horse less uncomfortable, it improves their performance. They had a son in 2004 whom they named "Bode" (/bodi/ BOH-dee), after skier Bode Miller. Yeah, but thats what drives him. Board member Michael E. Pegram had for decades hired Baffert to train his top horses, including the winner of the 1998 Kentucky Derby, Real Quiet. In 2015, Baffert trained the 2014 champion two-year-old colt American Pharoah to win the Triple Crown, the first to do so in 37 years. He still has a responsibility as the face of the game but I dont think hell overcome [this] because his personality wont allow him to do it.. Arthur is the CHRBs primary advisor on drug testing, according to state code; the role of determining penalties in individual cases falls to its stewards and commissioners. The 69-year-old Hall of Fame trainer is suing Churchill Downs Inc. in federal court to end his suspension. The previous August, Bob Baffert Racing Stables had donated $1,000 to the TOCs political action committee, California records show. And Bafferts veterinarians were prescribing it at his request without conducting laboratory tests to see whether the horses needed the drug, according to Arthurs later report. Baedeker and Arthur said in interviews that no matter how it was handled it would have been impossible to resolve the case that quickly. He also can be found at the Olympics, having just finished the Tokyo and Beijing double, marking his 11th Olympics. He was 10 when his father, Bill, bought a couple of quarter horses, plowed some land for a track and Bob started riding them before school each morning. He won the aforementioned first race at a sanctioned track in 1970, but his mother insisted he attend college and he enrolled in the University of Arizonas Race Track Industry Program. Baffert's attorney argued in court that the trainer's May suspension by the New York Racing Assn. The 74 total deaths since 2000 put Baffert third among trainers. Without that win, Justify would not have qualified to run in the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of the Triple Crown, a month later. ), Among the TOCs central crusades was countering the movement against Lasix. Baedeker said that before they made their recommendation to the board, they consulted with the states Office of the Attorney General, for which Petersen works, and received concurrence . I dont see somebody who is doping horses, Martin said after reviewing Bafferts drug-related history. Hell do anything to win, and hes got all his bases covered politically, Barry Irwin, owner of 2011 Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom, said of Baffert. Longtime client Mike Pegram explained, "Anybody who walks with that swagger, people are going to love him or hate himhe's a wiseass and irreverent." The testing levels have become ridiculous, Baffert told a conference of racehorse veterinarians during his keynote speech in 2000, according to a trade publication. He will rub people the wrong way by speaking his mind, sometimes he needs to hit the mute button. At one point, the regulators effort included searching for exonerating evidence in a literal haystack. Hospital food is a punchline. [19][20] On May 11, Baffert stated Medina Spirit had dermatitis, for which an ointment containing betamethasone was used. Baedeker said this week he changed his mind on not filing a complaint, which would have put the matter before CHRBs Board of Stewards, because he didnt want to pass the buck. CHRB brass agreed to follow Arthurs suggestion. I went under the radar. was. Santa Anitas 16-day fall season begins Friday with 14 stakes races over three days as trainers and owners take aim at the Breeders Cup at Del Mar. The owner was Kaleem Shah. In more than four decades in the sport, Baffert has faced significant regulatory scrutiny because of a high death rate only once, after seven of his horses collapsed in a short period of time at the same California track. Real Quiet won the Preakness as well, but, like Silver Charm, the horse was denied a Triple Crown win and finished second in the Belmont Stakes by a nose. Arthur B. Hancock III, a prominent thoroughbred owner, has for three decades been a leading proponent for eradicating drugs from the sport. ), Arthur has defended his handling of the Justify positive.

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