The 69-year-old Hall of Fame trainer is suing Churchill Downs Inc. in federal court to end his suspension. The 90 day ban against Baffert was set to be honored in all 38 racing states. Were going to get through it.. Instead of promptly filing a public complaint against Baffert, the CHRB kept the positive result secret while Arthur conducted a lengthy investigation. But a top veterinary official cleared Baffert, finding that the spate of deaths remains unexplained following a probe that demonstrated the hazards of going after Baffert. Yeah, but thats what drives him. Both trainers were fined $500. In the 1980s, Baffert moved to California and worked at Los Alamitos Race Course, where he switched to training Thoroughbreds full-time in 1991. Baffert wants a preliminary injunction that would keep Churchill Downs from denying his horses entry into races there and at Turfway Park, in Florence, Ky., and from "prohibiting him from earning. When a horse dies in California, CHRB records often list medications the horse had been prescribed, based on its medical history. "So now even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junky," Trump's statement read. 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. [2] His first winner was Flipper Star at Rillito Park on January 28, 1979. Other trainers seem to navigate just fine.. He routinely challenges most sanctions, usually agreeing to accept fines but vigorously fighting suspensions. That investigation led to the indictments that Baffert said spurred him to embrace more oversight, so the cheaters would be quickly caught and punished.. I thought wed get fourth. Its so obvious. Its not often that a sport turns against its biggest star, but Churchill Downs has taken that stand. Baffert, like many trainers, was using a thyroid drug that was cited in the CHRB investigation. Its all because of his success.. Great Read: Bob Baffert has come a long way in horse racing, Santa Anita opens Friday as prelude to Breeders Cup at Del Mar, Surging Crespi receives another strong performance from sophomore Diego Velazquez, High school baseball and softball: Fridays scores, With Marcus Morris sidelined, Clippers look to stabilize lineup and rotations, With their playoff lives at stake, Darvin Ham challenges Lakers effort and urgency. By age 20, he had developed a reputation as a trainer and was hired by other trainers to run their stables. By the April 1 ruling, Baffert had already transferred four 3-year-old colts to other trainers. In his analysis, Petersen estimated the states chances of winning at trial to be 50 percent. The deadliest period came between 2000 and 2005, when 34 of Bafferts horses in California died. But even in those cases, which were handled according to established rules, the horses were disqualified and their winning purses were forfeited. On July 15, 2020, Deputy Attorney General Robert Petersen sent his initial case assessment to Brodnik. Justify tested positive for scopolamine, an anti-nausea medication said to have potential performance-enhancing effects in horses, after winning the Santa Anita Derby in April 2018. No sanctions were issued against Baffert.[40][41]. In the next six months, three of his horses tested positive for banned or excessive substances four times in California, Arkansas and Kentucky. 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. Thats much higher than the Jockey Clubs widely cited national rates, which never exceed two deaths per 1,000 starts. Officials worked secretly to clear Bob Bafferts Justify amid 2018 Triple Crown run, records show. He appeared in an episode of the TV show Take Home Chef. [25][26] On June 14, 2021, Baffert sued the NYRA alleging the association had no authority to suspend his license and that suspension "without prior notice" was a violation of the law. Bob Baffert has supporters and detractors in how he deals with jockeys By John Cherwa Special Contributor Nov. 2, 2016 4:28 PM PT Bob Baffert, still fresh and snappy after hours of morning. The cluster of sudden deaths remains unexplained and there was no evidence whatsoever CHRB rules or regulations have been violated or any illicit activity played a part in the deaths, Arthurs report concluded. Baffert is a three-time winner of the Kentucky Derby, and has several top prospects for the May 5 race. 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. Without that win, Justify would not have qualified to run in the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of the Triple Crown, a month later. None of them are considered performance-enhancing in the traditional sense, such as amphetamines or speedballs. In 1997, he trained Silver Charm to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, finishing second in the Belmont. There is nothing new here, he wrote. 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. Bafferts attorney argued in court that the trainers May suspension by the New York Racing Assn. As he did so, a political group with Baffert on its board was involved in legislation that would result in Arthur losing his job. The Kentucky Derby winner is staying ahead of . In a recent interview, Arthur described his findings as damning for Baffert, in particular analysis in his report showing that, over a six-year period, Bafferts horses were nine times more likely to die of sudden death than the average trainers. Baffert failed in multiple attempts in Kentucky to overturn the track's ban or the start of his suspension, which began April 4. Grays office told the committee that removing Dr. Arthur from his position, while intentional, is not the sole purpose of the bill, records show. 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. If it surprised me it would be that I expected more, Roberts said. By then, Bafferts encounters with regulators dated back decades, to 1977, when he served a yearlong suspension for racing a horse on morphine. And Madeline Auerbach, who later became a CHRB commissioner, had partnered with Baffert in thoroughbred breeding. [38] This reminded the public that since 2000, at least 74 other horses had died while in Baffert's stables. It was obvious long before Miners Daughter collapsed in a blood-tinged froth in March 2013 that there was something amiss in Barn 61 at Hollywood Park, the Los Angeles-area racetrack. It was then that Baffert, one of the most accessible trainers in horse racing, stopped talking until this week. He paused, then added: Ive learned who my friends are.. 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. 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. Following the publication of the report, Baffert tweeted: Im gratified that CHRB completed its investigation & found there was no wrongdoing. Ive heard the rumors on Bobby since we got in the business after winning some Cal Cup races. Former client Kaleem Shah said, "He will rub people the wrong way by speaking his mind, sometimes he needs to hit the mute button. But the overall record indicates that he may not be running as tight a ship as he should.. But Californias adoption of ARCI guidelines is not a given. There are highs and lows and a lot of disappointment. [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. But by August, the plan had changed. Share on Facebook TWEET This In 2007, he joined the 15-member board of the Thoroughbred Owners of California (TOC), a nonprofit that represents the roughly 9,000 CHRB-licensed owners in the state. Before his Kentucky Derby-winning colt, Medina Spirit, tested positive for betamethasone last month which could erase the victory his horses were cited for drug-related violations 29 times, according to the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI). Former Democratic congressman Dennis Cardoza, also on the board, was co-owner with Pegram of Shakin It Up, a successful thoroughbred trained by Baffert. Its bizarre, Baedeker said, because you have a deputy attorney general criticizing the board for following the law to the letter.. In 1977, as a part-time trainer, he was suspended for a year when one of his horses tested positive for morphine. But the scuttled test result remained secret until the New York Times reported it in 2019. 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. Baffert was granted a stay until April 4 to gain time for an appeal. 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.. [10] Though number of racing starts are used to calculate rates of death for all horses in the care of race trainers, not all horse deaths were animals in race training nor were they necessarily race-related fatalities. Following the 2015 Belmont win, Baffert outlined several charities that he and his wife Jill supported. The veterinarian chalked up Bafferts response to ignorance. Medina Spirit departed Churchill Downs in a van before dawn on Monday, bound for Baltimore (a horse van, not Jeff Spicoli's VW bus ). Its truly painful when you know what the truth is, Baffert told The Times earlier this week in his first interview on the subject since May. Baffert claims the defendants have "unlawfully deprived and will continue to deprive Baffert of his right to due process of law guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment and of his right to. But Baffert and his lawyers had since established a reputation for pugnaciousness when regulators attempted to discipline him. Decorated racehorse trainer who won multiple Kentucky Derbies, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes. Does his love of the camera sometimes bite him? asked longtime owner and friend Mike Pegram. 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. Hes good.. 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. 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 . (A CHRB spokesman declined to comment, citing pending litigation. In 2000, for instance, another of his horses, Nautical Look, tested positive for morphine, landing Baffert a two-month suspension. [39] California's equine medical director found that Baffert's horses were routinely given Thyro-L, or thyroxine, a thyroid hormone, that could cause heart problems during exercise, but concluded the medication, which Baffert said he had been using routinely for the previous five years, did not cause the heart attacks.