In a text exchange Sunday with my good friend Moona Mullins and three of our closest horse racing brethren, I jokingly suggested the headline on the story about Bob Baffert’s Kentucky Derby winner failing a drug test should be: It’s a duck. Sub-head: Conclusion reached after it looks, talks and walks like one.
Eight days after winning his record seventh Derby, Baffert, horse racing’s most recognizable figure with his striking white hair and media-friendly personality, was back at Churchill Downs — not answering questions about Medina Spirit’s chances in Saturday’s Preakness, but rather discussing the 21 picograms of betamethasone found in the horse’s post-Derby blood test.
Baffert, a stranger to neither the winner’s circle nor bad news from the laboratories, insisted the horse has never been treated with the anti-inflammatory — which is perfectly legal — though Kentucky rules dictate that it may not be in a horse’s system on race day.
Any time a horse fails a drug test, the connections are entitled to have another test conducted on a second sample taken on race day. In most cases, the news of the original positive doesn’t even get released until the results of the second test are confirmed.
But this is the Kentucky Derby, the biggest race in the world, and after rumors started flying Saturday night, there was no chance of that. Baffert decided to get in front of the story and announce the news of the failed test himself, holding a press conference Sunday morning.
Saying he felt like he took a “gut punch” and that he had been “wronged,” Baffert implied that he may be the victim of a conspiracy, perhaps because his unparalleled success is too much for some to accept. He can try to sell the movie rights to Oliver Stone, but that’s the least likely scenario.
Could there have been a mistake with the test, or was the sample somehow contaminated? Possible, but unlikely. Could the second test come back negative? Same answer. Is Baffert, knowing his dog has already eaten a semester’s worth of homework, simply lying? Perhaps, though he must realize he has raised the stakes significantly.
One thing that is not in question: This is a terrible development for horse racing, the greatest game played outdoors. Instead of talking about the second leg of the Triple Crown Saturday, we are bogged down in a new controversy with an old protagonist. Baffert, who has five failed tests in the last three years, has offered a variety of explanations, some more plausible than others. Tuesday, he surmised that a cream that had been used to treat a skin irritation might be the culprit this time.
Those who follow racing religiously and casual fans who watch one race a year can agree that when the same thing keeps happening to the same person, it strains credulity to think it is coincidence. The posse may have finally caught up to Baffert, who has more than 3,100 wins and $320 million in purses in his Hall of Fame career, and who brought Kentucky Derby champ Real Quiet to Suffolk Downs for the Massachusetts Handicap in 1999. The horse ran a disappointing third and Baffert was on a plane back to California before he got back to the barn.
If Medina Spirit is disqualified from the Derby, it will mark only the third time that has happened in 147 runnings of the Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports. And it won’t do any good for those who wagered on second-place finisher Mandaloun, who will be declared the winner if Medina Spirit is disqualified. A $2 win bet on Mandaloun would have returned $55.80 on May 1. Unfortunately, you don’t get paid if you win it in the lab.
Maximum Security was taken down in 2019, but that was for interference during the race. The only other drug-induced DQ came in 1968, and it involved Massachusetts connections.
Peter Fuller, a Harvard-educated son of former governor Alvan T. Fuller, owned Dancer’s Image, who closed from 15 lengths behind to win the Derby. The horse was disqualified after a drug test detected phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory, in his system. Fuller admitted that the horse, who was bothered by sore ankles, was given Bute six days before the Derby, but it should have cleared his system within 72 hours at the most.
Fuller appealed the disqualification and won the first court battle, but the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission successfully appealed and, in 1972, the disqualification of Dancer’s Image was reinstated. Fuller finally gave up the fight in 1973, after spending more than $250,000 in legal fees trying to retain a $122,000 purse.
Fuller also floated a conspiracy theory, one which is actually believable. Dancer’s Image had won a stakes race in Maryland on April 6, 1968, two days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Fuller gave the purse money to grieving widow Coretta Scott King, a magnanimous gesture that may not have endeared him to everyone in the South, especially since Dr. King had led a protest against housing discrimination in Louisville during Derby Week a year earlier.
It is also possible that the veterinarian who gave Dancer’s Image the medication, Dr. Alex Harthill — a roguish figure who was charged with trying to bribe a lab employee in the 1950s and happened to be the house vet for storied Calumet Farm, whose Forward Pass had finished second — could have played a nefarious role in the failed test.
The reason many people firmly believe Fuller actually was wronged is that neither he nor his trainer, Lou Cavalaris, was ever involved in anything resembling a scandal before or after the 1968 Kentucky Derby. It is entirely fathomable that, at that time in this country, the good folks in the Commonwealth of Kentucky were none too pleased to see their race won by a liberal from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
It’s easy to feel bad for Peter Fuller; Bob Baffert is another story, though he is entitled to due process like anyone else. If that process confirms this violation, he should pay a serious price. The fact that betamethasone is not considered a performance-enhancing drug is immaterial. What is relevant is the irreparable damage that would result from the narrative of America’s highest-profile trainer cheating to win our highest-profile race.
