The Arkansas Racing Commission suspended Hall of Fame coach Bob Baffert for 15 days on Wednesday and canceled the victories of two of his horses after they tested positive for a banned substance.
One of the horses, Charlatan, won a division of the Arkansas Derby on May 2. Foal owners will lose the $ 300,000 in prizes to finish first. The owner of the other horse, a filly named Gamine, must lose a check for first place for $ 36,000 won in a grant race that same day. The suspension will run from August 1 to 15.
On June 20, Gamine won the Acorn Stakes Awards at Belmont Park in New York for nearly 19 lengths in a record time of 1 minute 32.55 seconds, a performance that inspired the filly’s talk pitting men in the Kentucky Derby, which It is scheduled for September 5.
Baffert is America’s preeminent active coach. He has won the Kentucky Derby five times. In 2015, he trained American Pharoah, the first horse to win the Triple Crown since it was asserted in 1978. Baffert won his second Triple Crown in 2018 with the Justify foal.
Baffert has also caught the attention of regulators over the years. These are his 26 and 27 drug violations, according to public records compiled by the Association of Commissioners of Hippodrome International and the database of Thoroughbred Regulatory Regulations maintained by the Jockey Club.
Charlatan and Gamine obtained two positive samples for lidocaine, a local anesthetic agent, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case had not been fully tried. The Times reported positive tests on its first samples in late May.
Lidocaine can be legitimately used to suture wounds or as a diagnostic tool to determine if horses are healthy enough to compete. The medication may also be present in ointments or creams used on cuts or abrasions. It is regulated by its potential to mask lameness in a bad horse.
In a hearing, Baffert and his representatives argued that the horses were accidentally exposed to lidocaine by an assistant trainer, Jimmy Barnes, who had applied a medicinal patch to his back. Barnes had broken his pelvis and the patch brand he was using, Salonpas, contains small amounts of lidocaine. The drug was transferred from his hands by applying a tongue tie, they said.
Four days after Charlatan’s runaway victory in the Arkansas Derby, the colt’s stud rights were sold for an undisclosed sum to Hill ‘n’ Dale Farms. The colt missed Belmont’s bets with an ankle injury, and Baffert has said he will also miss the Kentucky Derby. Charlatan may return in time for Preakness on October 3.
Justify, trained by Baffert, failed a drug test after winning the Santa Anita Derby almost a month before the 2018 Kentucky Derby. Justify ended up winning the Derby, Preakness, and Belmont that year for the Triple Crown. The rule in the books when Justify failed the test required the horse to be disqualified, losing both his Santa Anita Derby prize money and his entry into the Kentucky Derby.
California racing officials investigated the failed test for four months, allowing Justify to continue competing long enough to win the Triple Crown. In August, after Justify’s breeding rights sold for $ 60 million, the California Horse Racing Board, whose chairman at the time, Chuck Winner, had employed Baffert to train his horses, dropped the investigation into a rare session behind closed doors.
The board ruled that Justify’s positive test for the banned drug scopolamine had been the result of “environmental contamination”, not intentional doping. Baffert has denied acting wrong, but the amount of the drug found in Justify suggested it was present not because of contamination in his diet or bedding, but rather because of an effort to improve performance, according to Dr. Rick Sams, who ran the drug lab for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission from 2011 to 2018.
Mick Ruis, the owner of the second-place horse in the Santa Anita Derby, is in dispute with California officials to have his Bolt d’Oro foal declared the winner and win the first-place check for $ 600,000.
