Churchill reinstates ban on Baffert through 2024
?q=100)
Churchill Downs Inc. has reinstated a ban of the trainer Bob Baffert from its properties through the end of 2024, citing “continued concerns regarding the threat to the safety and integrity of racing he poses” to CDI-owned racetracks.
The terse statement did not refer specifically to any instances that triggered the re-instatement of the ban, but it said that Baffert “continues to peddle a false narrative concerning the failed drug test of Medina Spirit” in the 2021 Derby. In that Derby, Baffert’s Medina Spirit tested positive for the regulated medication betamethasone, and he was subsequently suspended 90 days by the KHRC. Medina Spirit was disqualified.
“A trainer who is unwilling to accept responsibility for multiple drug test failures in our highest-profile races cannot be trusted to avoid future misconduct,” the statement said.
Churchill Downs said in a follow-up statement after an inquiry by DRF that Baffert’s denial of the charges related to Medina Spirit is a “long and ongoing list.”
Clark Brewster, Baffert’s attorney in a case challenging the earlier ban by Churchill, did not immediately respond to a phone message.
A ban would make Baffert ineligible to participate in next year’s Derby, after sitting out the past two as well.
During the broadcast of the Belmont Stakes on June 10 on the Fox network, Baffert appeared in a taped interview in which he said that the positive should have never been adjudicated because Medina Spirit was not injected with betamethasone. Baffert has said that the horse was treated with an ointment containing betamethasone and that applying the ointment was not a violation of Kentucky rules, a contention that met with swift pushback from Kentucky regulators.
Asked what he would have done different in the Fox interview, Baffert said: “I probably wouldn’t have done anything different because everything that we were doing was legal. We didn’t break any rules.”
In handing down their penalty and affirming it after appeals by Baffert, Kentucky regulators said that the route of administration has no bearing on whether the presence of a drug in a post-race sample is a violation.
Churchill banned Baffert through the 2023 Derby due to the Medina Spirit positive test, as well as other positives that Baffert had racked up over the previous two years, including a betamethasone positive in the horse Gamine in the 2020 Kentucky Oaks. Earlier this year, a federal judge in Kentucky upheld the legality of the ban.
Roughly one year into the ban, Churchill adopted changes to its eligibility rules for the Kentucky Derby that eventually prevented any horse trained by Baffert in the months leading up to the Derby to earn any points in Derby prep races.
:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.