Following the publication of the report, Baffert tweeted: Im gratified that CHRB completed its investigation & found there was no wrongdoing. There are no secrets on the backside.. Baffert faces unprecedented scrutiny after a positive drug test marred a win by his horse Medina Spirit at this years Kentucky Derby. Baffert has trained horses that won fifteen American Classic Races, fifteen Breeders' Cup races, four Dubai World Cups and the inaugural Pegasus World Cup. In 2000, for instance, another of his horses, Nautical Look, tested positive for morphine, landing Baffert a two-month suspension. This America's different." pic . The CHRB had not adopted that recommendation. But in 2018, Arthur was still on the job when another Baffert-trained horse tested regulators willingness to challenge him. Kentucky regulators taped calls without consent with Baffert after Medina Spirit test. The board followed their recommendation. The previous August, Bob Baffert Racing Stables had donated $1,000 to the TOCs political action committee, California records show. Drop dead while galloping, read a California Horse Racing Board vets account of the first horses death in November 2011. The testing levels have become ridiculous, Baffert told a conference of racehorse veterinarians during his keynote speech in 2000, according to a trade publication. Similarly, cases against two horses who tested positive in Arkansas in 2020 for lidocaine were dismissed as being the result of accidental transfer from an assistant trainer who was using the medication on himself. Some of the horses that have died have been my horses, and on each and every instance, I have spoken to Bob and Ive been more than satisfied with the explanation, Shah said. Hal Earnhardt, an Arizona car dealer and Bafferts oldest client, introduced him to Pegram, who made his money in fast-food franchising. Mick Ruis, the owner and trainer of the second-place finisher in the Santa Anita Derby, has sued the CHRB. Bafferts lawyers have made explicit that he will accept fines but not a suspension, and state regulators have continually obliged him. After the Times broke the news of the positive drug test, Ruis sued the CHRB in January 2020. But Californias adoption of ARCI guidelines is not a given. With upward of $1 million in yearly revenue drawn from wagering at tracks, the TOCs stated mission included establishing fair and reasonable medication rules and integrity standards., Baffert, the groups resident celebrity, was in business with several of his colleagues. The last stand of Bob Baffert, horse racing's top trainer - Los Angeles All of the explanations for the positive drug tests are plausible, but collectively they raise questions. He was fined $1,500. Trainer Bob Baffert's ban from racing in New York is over - Associated Press Baffert barred from participating in Preakness Stakes by Maryland commission By Jacob Calvin Meyer - The. Despite the cautious approach of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, which five months later still has not acted on the drug positive, or disqualified, Medina Spirit, Churchill Downs suspended the trainer for two years. The drug was again betamethasone, and Baffert again expressed shock and vowed to clear his name. This horse was going to run at the Triple Crown, Arthur said. FILE - In this Monday July 12, 2021 file photo, horse trainer Bob Baffert leaves federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Hollendorfers lawyer, Drew Couto, has claimed his client is being unfairly blamed for a high-profile spike of deaths at the track. But the star trainers sudden support belied the fact that Baffert has for years been entangled with the very problems he blamed for his sports potential demise: drugs, dead horses and a feckless regulatory system. Bafferts record of testing failures threatens public confidence in thoroughbred racing and the reputation of the Kentucky Derby, said Bill Carstanjen, chief executive of Churchill Downs Inc. Given these repeated failures over the last year, including the increasingly extraordinary explanations, we firmly believe that asserting our rights to impose these measures is our duty and responsibility.. For every Baffert defender, you can find someone on the other side. But the sports new governing authority will not take over until mid-2022. Does his love of the camera sometimes bite him? asked longtime owner and friend Mike Pegram. After winning the Santa Anita Derby in April of that year, Bafferts Justify tested positive for scopolamine, a banned substance, which normally would have disqualified the victory and made the horse ineligible to run in that years Kentucky Derby. Then, when American Pharoah won the 2015 Belmont Stakes, the win was the fourth attempt at a Triple Crown for Baffert, who at age 62 became the second-oldest trainer to win a Triple Crown.[6]. CHRB brass agreed to follow Arthurs suggestion. Currently, his major coverage area is horse racing, where he can be found at big races at Santa Anita, the Triple Crown series and Breeders Cup. In 2010, Misremembered, a horse he bred, owned by his wife Jill and their friend George Jacobs, won the Santa Anita Handicap, marking Baffert's first Grade I win as a breeder instead of a trainer. This article was published more than1 year ago. Nothing is held back.. 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 that period, 36% of all cardiac related horse deaths in California were animals trained by Baffert. 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. There is nothing new here, he wrote. The quest to find Jimson weed continued. The groom denied it. At least 74 horses have died in Bafferts care in his home state of California since 2000, more than all but two of hundreds of trainers in the state, according to a Post analysis of data and public records. I dont see somebody who is doping horses, Martin said after reviewing Bafferts drug-related history. 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. Most were for excessive use of phenylbutazone, a commonly used anti-inflammatory known as bute. The lawyer wrote there is evidence suggesting that this matter was handled differently.. Trainer Bob Baffert celebrates after his horse, Authentic, won the Kentucky Derby in September 2020. Were going to get through it.. Baffert dedicated American Pharoah's win to Bobby. But in this case, Arthur urged a lighter penalty based on his suggestion the CHRB downgrade the drug. 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. "We live in a different world now. [8][37] That case was eventually dismissed as the regulators concluded the facts supported an instance of feed contamination. By then, Bafferts encounters with regulators dated back decades, to 1977, when he served a yearlong suspension for racing a horse on morphine. Four months later, during a confidential executive session, Arthur and CHRB Director Rick Baedeker recommended that the commissioners not move forward with the disqualification of Justify, arguing that the scopolamine positive was probably the result of contamination from jimson weed. Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert has successfully appealed his 15-day suspension to the Arkansas Racing Commission, allowing the six-time Kentucky Derby winner to resume preparations to run Medina . Without that win, Justify would not have qualified to run in the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of the Triple Crown, a month later. Bob Baffert blamed "cancel culture" after his horse, Medina Spirit, who won the Kentucky Derby, failed its post-race drug test. 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. We went there with expectations not very high. He also won the race in 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 when run as a Grade I event. He has won the Kentucky Derby five times. My focus will always be on the best care for my horses. Shah, the owner of at least three of the horses, told The Post he had fully trusted Baffert as a trainer and had no reason to suspect that he would harm the horses he loves the horses. Brewster, the attorney, said that Baffert believed the horses had ingested rat poison, traces of which were found in one of them. Grays office told the committee that removing Dr. Arthur from his position, while intentional, is not the sole purpose of the bill, records show. It basically said something under his control is associated with these fatalities, Arthur said, but regulators couldnt act without evidence of a rules violation. Baedeker and Arthur said in interviews that no matter how it was handled it would have been impossible to resolve the case that quickly. The trainer was Baffert. Baffert is America's pre-eminent active trainer. [9] Point Given was nominated in 2009, but elected and inducted in 2010. The Post separately obtained start data dating back to 2000 from the Daily Racing Form to put the deaths into context. Following the 2015 Belmont win, Baffert outlined several charities that he and his wife Jill supported. You could trust him and that never changed.. In the next six months, three of his horses tested positive for banned or excessive substances four times in California, Arkansas and Kentucky. He also can be found at the Olympics, having just finished the Tokyo and Beijing double, marking his 11th Olympics. Trainer Bob Baffert stands outside his barn at Churchill Downs on May 2, 2016, in Louisville, Ky. Medina . to move forward. Petersen did not respond to an interview request. Two Triple Crown winners and a signature shock of white hair will do that for a man. 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. Its not often that a sport turns against its biggest star, but Churchill Downs has taken that stand. All of the drugs were legal, just not in the amounts found on race day. Bob Baffert suspended from home of Kentucky Derby after Medina - CNN Darrell Vienna, Ruiss attorney, said he would not have agreed to those stipulations but was not allowed to intervene. Real Quiet won the race that year, and Baffert also finished third with Indian Charlie. A week after that, Baffert learned of the positive test. I felt that we wouldve been dumping this in their lap, that we wouldve been putting them in an unfair position, and that we needed to go ahead and do the difficult thing, quite frankly, which is take responsibility for the decision, Baedeker said. Has his success made people hate him more? Bell told an investigator he then checked other bales and found a branch and pods he thought were Jimson weed in the parking lot. [15], At a news conference on May 9, Baffert initially said that Medina Spirit was never administered betamethasone. CHRB regulations state that its foreign substances guidelines are based on ARCI recommendations as modified by the state board. He tried his hand at substitute teaching before he started training horses full time. Robert A. Baffert is an American Racehorse Trainer who trained the 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah and 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify. As he did so, a political group with Baffert on its board was involved in legislation that would result in Arthur losing his job. It was then that Baffert, one of the most accessible trainers in horse racing, stopped talking until this week. The week after Justify won the Preakness, bringing him to the cusp of the Triple Crown, test results came back showing the plant they had tested was milkweed. Celebrities Who Are Republicans/Conservatives - HubPages Usually, regulatory agencies do not have the guts to do whats fair and right, Arthur testified during a CHRB hearing in October, and this board made that decision appropriately., He conceded that the lack of transparency was unusual. 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. This America's different." pic . Trump: Kentucky Derby Controversy 'Emblematic of What Is - Newsmax With private eyes and political muscle, horse racings elite pushed to punish dopers, Throughout the months-long process, CHRB officials had indicated they planned on filing a complaint against Baffert, which would have exposed the failed drug test. 10, 2022. In 2015, a loose group of prominent thoroughbred owners hatched a plan according to people with direct knowledge of it to sic private eyes, from a firm called 5 Stones that helped bring down Russian dopers, on their sports most famous trainer. Judge nullifies horse trainer Bob Baffert's NY suspension The colt went on to win the Preakness Stakes, giving the trainer his third shot at winning the Triple Crown. I guess I'm more of an "old school" Republican. He married his second wife, Jill, a former television reporter based in Louisville, in 2002. According to Arthurs report, he found that Baffert was dispensing Thyro-L, or thyroxine, a prescription thyroid hormone, to all horses in his care. Bob Bafferts horses have incurred numerous drug violations over the course of his 44 years as a thoroughbred trainer. This included Baffert's home track at Santa Anita, although Baffert horse Shaaz won the sixth race on April 2. Ruis horse, Bolt dOro, finished second. According to protocols, the medication is supposed to have a 14-day withdrawal period. After the test result was revealed, Mick Ruis, the trainer and owner of the Santa Anita Derbys runner-up, sued the CHRB, claiming Justifys win should have been erased. (At least one death of a Baffert horse identified by The Post was not included in the agencys data.) Kaleem Shah, an owner who split with Baffert in 2016, defended the trainer over the horse deaths. Bob Baffert | National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Hes the person few in the business want to talk about, but everyone wants to hear about. Maryland Racing Commission Officially Suspends Bob Baffert, If the complaint was ruled on quickly enough, it would have made Justify ineligible for the Kentucky Derby. The positive test only emerged when the New York Times reported it more than a year later. He claimed that the horse death data provided by the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) was not possible.. Baffert went to federal court and had the suspension overturned, but NYRA has called a scheduling conference on the trainer for Oct. 11. One of his grooms, Clemintino Abrego Garcia, testified that Baffert called him three or four times attempting to get him to admit that he had eaten baked goods near the horse. It subsequently said any horses running for a suspended trainer (Baffert) would not be eligible for Kentucky Derby or Oaks qualifying points. Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert has been suspended from the home of the Kentucky Derby for two years after Medina Spirit's positive post-race drug was confirmed, the company that runs the. The bill was introduced by California Assemblyman Adam Gray, a former aide to Cardoza who had been in office for less than three months. Medina Spirit: Bob Baffert again playing victim in drug controversy California keeps track of horse deaths by trainer, but there are errors and limits to the data. In correspondence with the agencys lawyer, Baedeker wrote that because our staff failed to act in a timely manner, the horses, trainer, owner and others could be harmed unjustly if they didnt use the more lenient classification. Bob Baffert: Judge denies his request to lift two-year Churchill Downs But hes a good person, no, a great person. [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 Baffert's Family: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know One of the biggest assholes and cheats of all time, horse-racing In his claustrophobic and cluttered office at Santa Anita Barn 5, Bob Baffert, the hall of fame trainer, was pushing papers and moving stacks, hunting for a faded photo of his 17-year-old self aboard a long-forgotten quarter horse from a small racing circuit in Arizona. Carson Valley was killed in a freak accident in 2019 at Del Mar when a loose horse crashed into the Baffert trainee. A 4/C violation meant minor punishment that wouldnt typically involve disqualifying the horse or redistributing winnings. 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 bottom line, he said, is if youre a horse in Bob Bafferts barn, youre there to work.. What we knew about horses you could put in a thimble. The rise and fall of Jorge Navarro, the alleged doping king of horse racing. The winner's share of the $600 purse was $330. Another day passed before it was discovered the colt was administered a topical ointment for a rash that contained betamethasone. Theres 10,000 other trainers who understand the absolute insurer rule and dont seem to run afoul of it, Gagliano said, referring to the edict that any substances in the horse are the trainers responsibility. The 69-year-old Hall of Fame trainer is suing Churchill Downs Inc . On a recent afternoon, Baffert appeared largely unperturbed by the firestorm surrounding him when he answered his door in Arcadia, Calif. This is the first Ive learned of it, Baffert responded when told of The Posts finding that he had the highest rate of horse deaths among other top trainers in the state. Judge Denies Baffert Request to Reverse Churchill Downs Ban Closing everything and moving forward is in Bobs best interest and the best interest of horse racing. The Judge made her ruling based on the NYRA having not allowed Baffert a forum to refute their claims and stated that (they the NYRA).."had held no hearing let alone a prompt one. The horse is scheduled to run Saturday in the Awesome Again Stakes at Santa Anita. Petersen noted that in a previous case the board had exonerated the trainers of three horses who had tested positive for scopolamine, finding the flunked tests were a result of Jimson weed. Why would people want to be betting on horses when there are allegations and there are real positives and hes getting off on technicalities.. Arthur and CHRB investigators inspected Bafferts barn, reviewed veterinary records and interviewed Baffert, who was flanked by an attorney. In 1997, he trained Silver Charm to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, finishing second in the Belmont. 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. Garcia left California horse racing the next year, according to CHRB records; he could not be reached for comment by The Post. I went under the radar. Robert A. Baffert (born January 13, 1953) is an American racehorse trainer who trained the 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah and 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify. He rejoined The Times in 2009 and left his post as deputy sports editor late in 2017. LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. High Connection won the $125,000 Los Alamitos Derby by 1 3/4 lengths Saturday, giving trainer Bob Baffert his second victory on the card in his return to competition after serving a 90-day suspension. The Jockey Club has a database of thoroughbred breakdowns meaning deaths stemming from track injuries but said it is barred from sharing its data because of its contracts with racetracks. A New York federal judge on Wednesday, July 14, 2021 nullified the suspension of horse trainer Bob Baffert, finding that the New York Racing Association acted unconstitutionally by failing to let him adequately respond to claims made against him after Kentucky . 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. The California Horse Racing Board cleared Baffert of any wrongdoing, but with reservation, calling such a cluster of deaths a less than 1-in-1,000 occurrence. Last October Gamine was disqualified from third to last in the Kentucky Oaks after betamethasone, an anti-inflammatory, was discovered in the horses system. Baffert failed in multiple attempts in Kentucky to overturn the track's ban or the start of his suspension, which began April 4. Early life and career [ edit] Arthur indicated in his report that thyroxine was suspected to cause heart problems for horses during exercise, and at least four of the sudden deaths involved confirmed or suspected cardiac failure. He told reporters that he would fight the issue "tooth and nail. Arthur, the equine medical director, took issue with Petersens legal finding that the CHRBs handling of the case could be declared arbitrary or capricious. You wouldnt know it now.. I thought wed get fourth. Hes won seven, more than anyone else in the 147-year history of the race. In the court of public opinion, hes a big loser, said Barry Irwin, owner of racing group Team Valor and an outspoken critic of race-day medication and Baffert. Medina Spirit departed Churchill Downs in a van before dawn on Monday, bound for Baltimore (a horse van, not Jeff Spicoli's VW bus ). It didnt take Baffert long to dominate Rillito Park and Prescott Downs in Arizona. In 2015, the Daily Herald ran a profile on Jill Baffert, explaining that she was a former journalist and waitress from Centerville. When Arthur delivered his report in November 2013, the bill to remove him from office was still pending. The month after Gray introduced his legislation, Bafferts seventh sudden death made the deaths at Hollywood Park a national news story. Sports team owners make huge political donations. Where does their