Thats much higher than the Jockey Clubs widely cited national rates, which never exceed two deaths per 1,000 starts. "So now even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junky," Trump's statement read. It was later discovered that horses from separate barns had also tested positive. Gray said at the time that the bill also would increase the institutional knowledge of Californias central horse drug-testing lab. Baffert said the horse was off the drug for 18 days before the race. Racing does not have a historical database for violations, with most of the information kept on the state level. It didnt take Baffert long to dominate Rillito Park and Prescott Downs in Arizona. The TOC, of which Baffert is still a board member, did not respond to requests for comment. It takes only a minute or so to walk from the racetrack at Santa Anita Park to the barns in back. The way this case was handled was out of respect for Justify., On the afternoon of April 18, 2018, Arthur learned that Justify and another Baffert horse, Hoppertunity, had tested positive for scopolamine. And Madeline Auerbach, who later became a CHRB commissioner, had partnered with Baffert in thoroughbred breeding. (Pegram and Auerbach did not respond to interview requests. 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. The month after that, Grays bill to limit Arthurs term was passed out of a committee. The majority of the deaths in Bafferts care are attributed to breakdowns, though others have died suddenly without explanation and some of the horses suffered illness including his most recent death, Noodles, in May where pneumonia was the suspected cause. Baffert won the Derby a third time in 2002 with War Emblem. The colt lost the Belmont Stakes after breaking poorly from the starting gate. 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. He tried his hand at substitute teaching before he started training horses full time. Decorated racehorse trainer who won multiple Kentucky Derbies, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes. Why would people want to be betting on horses when there are allegations and there are real positives and hes getting off on technicalities.. Baffert grew up on a ranch in Nogales, Arizona, where his family raised cattle and chickens. His graded stakes wins include nine wins in the Santa Anita Derby, nine in the Haskell Invitational Handicap, and fourteen in the Del Mar Futurity, a race he won seven straight times from 1996 to 2002, when it was a Grade II event. In 1997 he won his first Kentucky Derby with Silver Charm. It bothers me when hes not considered the Kentucky Derby winner.. 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. Baffert was recently suspended for 90 days by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, California Horse Racing Board, and the New York State Gaming Commission for drug violations in the 2021 Kentucky . In winning the 141st Kentucky Derby, bringing his total number of victories in the race to four; Baffert also ran the third-place finisher, the previously undefeated colt Dortmund. There wasnt any question in my mind, he said recently. Yeah, sure, hes a wiseass and irreverent. Like Baffert, Hollendorfer is in the thoroughbred Hall of Fame. Rick Arthur, Californias medical equine director, who the documents show played a central role in the scuttling of the Justify matter, said the only part of the CHRBs handling of the case that disappointed him was the secrecy. If you lose 75% of the time, youre considered really, really good. 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. Ive heard the rumors on Bobby since we got in the business after winning some Cal Cup races. April 29, 2022 9:00 AM. Baffert was granted a stay until April 4 to gain time for an appeal. 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. Baffert failed in multiple attempts in Kentucky to overturn the track's ban or the start of his suspension, which began April 4. 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. [42] He had been paid $200,000 to allow the Burger King to stand behind him in the grandstand during the televised broadcast of the Belmont, after having turned down $150,000 to allow the mascot to appear with him at the Preakness. 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 is trying to put 2020 behind him and move forward in a positive manner, Robertson wrote in an e-mail to Borden. Real Quiet won the race that year, and Baffert also finished third with Indian Charlie. A CHRB spokesman said the agency could not comment or make any employees available for an interview, citing the pending litigation. Early life and career [ edit] The new classification simply makes more sense pharmacologically, Arthur wrote. The board followed their recommendation. By then, Bafferts encounters with regulators dated back decades, to 1977, when he served a yearlong suspension for racing a horse on morphine. 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. There were at least 39 trainers with more fatalities to their name than Baffert during that period. Regardless, the indictments appeared to sway Baffert, whose opinion piece in The Post supported drastic action to fix a broken system. Among the provisions in the federal legislation that Baffert supported is a phaseout of Lasix on race day a reform Baffert had opposed for years. 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. [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. Horse trainer Bob Baffert, left, leaves federal court in Brooklyn on July 12. In July 2020, Merneith tested positive for dextromethorphan, a drug commonly used in cough medicine. His last day as medical equine director is Wednesday. What I can tell you definitely is this case was handled differently, and it was handled differently because of Rick Arthur, said Ruiss attorney, Darrell Vienna. 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. CHRB brass agreed to follow Arthurs suggestion. Arthur is retiring at the end of June from a job often consumed by the scandals of a single trainer. By the April 1 ruling, Baffert had already transferred four 3-year-old colts to other trainers. 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 bill was introduced by California Assemblyman Adam Gray, a former aide to Cardoza who had been in office for less than three months. [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. I told him there would be nothing from CHRB before the KY Derby, unlikely before the Preakness and possibly not until after the Belmont, Arthur wrote. The ARCI rules are recommendations, the associations president, Ed Martin, said in an interview. [43] At the post-Belmont press conference, Baffert announced he and his wife would be making donations of $50,000 each to the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, the California Retirement Management Account (CARMA), and Old Friends Equine, all programs for retired race horses; and to the Permanently Disabled Jockey's Fund in memory of a Quarter Horse Jockey named Robert Z. Baffert, however, wouldnt change the outcome. According to Arthurs report, he found that Baffert was dispensing Thyro-L, or thyroxine, a prescription thyroid hormone, to all horses in his care. Baffert won his first race as a thoroughbred trainer Jan. 28, 1979, saddling Flipper Star to a victory at Rillito in Arizona. Baffert, one of the most legendary trainers in American horse racing, has faced criticism and suspensions after his 2021 Kentucky Derby champion, Medina . This America's different." pic . 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 . Pegram persuaded Baffert to try thoroughbreds. Between November 2011 and March 2013, however, Baffert had seven of his horses die of sudden death, not on the race track. Garcia left California horse racing the next year, according to CHRB records; he could not be reached for comment by The Post. During a hearing, records show, Baffert argued the positive test could have been a result of his stable hands eating poppy seed bagels and muffins around the horse. The previous August, Bob Baffert Racing Stables had donated $1,000 to the TOCs political action committee, California records show. In the settlement, which records show did not include monetary damages, CHRB agreed to file a complaint against Justify. "This is emblematic of what is happening to our country. Finding a new director every two to four years would cost $300,000 each time, a committee that analyzed the bill found. Baffert was inducted into Lone Star Park's Hall of Fame in 2007, and in 2009, he was nominated and inducted to the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame, the same year as a filly he trained, Silverbulletday. The trainer was fined $2,500. There are highs and lows and a lot of disappointment. Last October Gamine was disqualified from third to last in the Kentucky Oaks after betamethasone, an anti-inflammatory, was discovered in the horses system. Hes Mr. Teflon.. He followed it with six more Derbies, two of which launched Triple Crown runs, with American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018. Citrus Feed Companys Larry Bell has long supplied Baffert with feed and has previously testified in Bafferts defense, according to CHRB records. He's a cheat and an asshole, and I hope Medina Spirit gets taken down and his connections are denied the $1.8 million first-place check. 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. The goal, the people familiar said, was to get Baffert to support languishing reforms in the sport. Baffert dedicated American Pharoah's win to Bobby. In 2015, the Daily Herald ran a profile on Jill Baffert, explaining that she was a former journalist and waitress from Centerville. Bob had the personality and he was honest. 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. His primary attorney is Craig Robertson, who represents him in all regulatory matters, but he has recused himself from any action against Churchill Downs because his law firm does business with the company, creating a conflict of interest. No horse loving person like Bob or his entire team accepts the reality of a horse death with anything other than sadness and despair, the lawyers said in their statement. He started at The Times in 1980 and left in 1995 to be sports editor of the Chicago Tribune and Tribune Co. sports coordinator in 2002. Baffert, a La Caada Flintridge resident who is currently training his horses at Santa Anita, has not officially been charged with anything related to Medina Spirit. But in the most recent election in June, he finished seventh of eight, the only incumbent beaten. was unconstitutional after Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit failed a postrace drug test. The lawyers said that taking into account Bafferts estimate of how many horses he has in his care, a count that differs from the starts data, the number of deaths of horses in Bobs barn is consistent with what would normally be expected from the horse population in general. Starts are regularly used, including by the CHRB, to study the death rates of a trainer. "We live in a different world now. [10][12] However, his violations for use of prohibited medications has sparked controversy. [31][32] Additional charges were added on January 3, 2022. [2], Baffert graduated from the University of Arizona's Race Track Industry Program with a Bachelor of Science degree,[3] got married, and began training quarter horses at a Prescott, Arizona farm. American Pharoah next won the 140th Preakness Stakes, making six victories in that race for Baffert, who also finished fourth with Dortmund. Baffert went to federal court and had the suspension overturned, but NYRA has called a scheduling conference on the trainer for Oct. 11. Trainer Bob Baffert celebrates after his horse, Authentic, won the Kentucky Derby in September 2020. 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. 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. Baedeker this week acknowledged that they handled the process more slowly than usual. And in the 13 months following his essay in The Post, Bafferts horses tested positive for prohibited or excessive substances five times in three states. He claimed the boards cover up cost him damages including the $400,000 difference between the first-place and second-place purses in the Santa Anita Derby. View . Hospital food is a punchline. Another person who came to Bafferts defense was his former assistant Tim Yakteen, who now runs his own stable. We might have gone to the board sooner, but obviously because of the high-profile nature of this thing we were making sure we had everything buttoned up, he said. How carefully the dosage was followed was not determined, Arthur wrote. [33], In February 2022, Baffert was suspended 90 days and fined $7,500 by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. Baffert has had two fatalities in the last three years, a low number for a barn of his size. Monty Roberts, a trainer who has agitated for more humane treatment of racehorses throughout his six-decade career, said that Baffert has long been one of the most important voices holding the sport back from reform. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Baffert wrote that reforming racing was not just necessary to the sports survival but the only moral path forward. Earlier data was unreliable, the racing publication said. 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 public backlash, including a letter written by a gay. This pattern has bred frustration among some horsemen. Baffert is the biggest name in horse racing, even bigger than the animals he conditions. The Baffert who snubbed me on April 29, 2010, that is the real Bob Baffert, not the glib, seemingly affable chap heretofore seen in TV interviews. The consolation is knowing the truth will come out as the process plays out. Drop dead while galloping, read a California Horse Racing Board vets account of the first horses death in November 2011. Grays office told the committee that removing Dr. Arthur from his position, while intentional, is not the sole purpose of the bill, records show. From there, he moved to racing at recognized tracks, scoring his first victory at age 17 in 1970. All of the explanations for the positive drug tests are plausible, but collectively they raise questions. [8][37] That case was eventually dismissed as the regulators concluded the facts supported an instance of feed contamination. 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. But Clark Brewster, the attorney representing Medina Spirits owner, Amr Zedan, then contacted The Post and described Baffert as being unfairly maligned. ), Among the TOCs central crusades was countering the movement against Lasix. 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 horse's. Mr. [As for whats going on now,] I dont like it but Im dealing with 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. Baffert has trained horses that won fifteen American Classic Races, fifteen Breeders' Cup races, four Dubai World Cups and the inaugural Pegasus World Cup. Bob Baffert blamed "cancel culture" after his horse, Medina Spirit, who won the Kentucky Derby, failed its post-race drug test. In that period, 36% of all cardiac related horse deaths in California were animals trained by Baffert. He acknowledged there was no way to determine if that bale was part of the delivery to Baffert, according to the records, but the CHRB investigator nonetheless submitted the sample for testing. [7] Baffert became a 7-time winner of the Kentucky Derby in 2021 with Medina Spirit. Shah said the two parted over disagreements that should have been resolved, without being specific. Jerry Hollendorfer has the most deaths with 122. The month after Gray introduced his legislation, Bafferts seventh sudden death made the deaths at Hollywood Park a national news story. The 77-year-old billionaire made headlines last year when he made a $10,000 contribution to opponents of Houston's Equal Rights Ordinance. When he was 10, his father purchased some Quarter Horses and he practiced racing them on a dirt track. (Arthur and those involved with the bill said the actions were unrelated. 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. He paused, then added: Ive learned who my friends are.. The Post separately obtained start data dating back to 2000 from the Daily Racing Form to put the deaths into context. In 1997, he trained Silver Charm to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, finishing second in the Belmont. Baffert parlayed a hobby as a 5-foot-9 jockey into a job as a quarter-horse conditioner into a career as a thoroughbred trainer before jumping onto the highest pedestal of horse racing and becoming the most recognizable name in the sport. 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. "[29][30] On September 10, 2021 Baffert was charged by NYRA for conduct detrimental to the best interests of racing. The previous August, Bob Baffert Racing Stables had donated $1,000 to the TOC's political action committee, California records show. Baffert revisited the Derby the next year, sending two top colts, Real Quiet and Indian Charlie, to Louisville. 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. Bafferts attorney argued in court that the trainers May suspension by the New York Racing Assn. [2] Baffert and his family reside in California. He makes it clear that he believes in same-day medication and he believes in his whips, said Roberts, who has long pushed to remove whipping horses from racing. But in 2018, Arthur was still on the job when another Baffert-trained horse tested regulators willingness to challenge him. It subsequently said any horses running for a suspended trainer (Baffert) would not be eligible for Kentucky Derby or Oaks qualifying points. [2][4], Baffert established his early reputation with less expensive horses like Silver Charm and Real Quiet, bought for $16,500 and $17,000 respectively. Horse trainer Bob Baffert, left, leaves federal court in Brooklyn on July 12. 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. 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. Racing officials ruled that the positive test was a result of contamination and the wins of Charlatan and Gamine were restored. 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. The bottom line, he said, is if youre a horse in Bob Bafferts barn, youre there to work.. Baffert failed in multiple attempts in Kentucky to overturn the track's ban or the start of his suspension, which began April 4. 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.