Judge to decide on Baffert's stay of suspension on Monday

FRANKFORT, KY – A Kentucky district court judge on Thursday said he will issue a ruling on Monday on whether to grant a stay of a 90-day suspension issued to the trainer Bob Baffert by Kentucky stewards.

The judge, Thomas Wingate of the Franklin County District Court, said that the ruling on Monday would “probably” include an additional stay of Baffert’s suspension regardless of his decision, “to give the sides time to file an appeal.”

Baffert’s suspension was initially scheduled to start on March 8, but it has been pushed back indefinitely after Wingate asked the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission 10 days ago to delay the onset of the penalty until at least March 22 so he could conduct a hearing into the request for a stay and issue a ruling.

At the two-hour hearing on Thursday, attorneys for Baffert and the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission argued their cases for and against a stay. Wingate frequently pressed the KHRC’s attorney, Jennifer Wolsing, on whether the KHRC routinely denies stays in medication cases, at one point saying that he has been a judge for 30 years and that he could not remember the KHRC acting in a similar manner.

“I kind of thought it was just automatic,” Wingate said. Wingate frequently hears cases involving racing adjudications because his district includes Frankfort, the state capital.

Baffert was issued the 90-day suspension in February. Baffert immediately appealed the decision to the KHRC and asked for a stay until his appeal could be heard, but the KHRC’s executive director denied a stay, and the full KHRC later affirmed that decision in a unanimous vote (with three abstentions). Baffert’s attorneys then filed a request for a temporary injunction in Wingate’s court.

The Thursday hearing also revealed that the KHRC has scheduled Baffert’s appeal of the suspension beginning April 18. The appeal, which will be held in front of an administrative hearing officer, has been allotted four days. It typically takes four to six months for an appeal in front of the commission to be fully adjudicated.

The suspension was issued after a horse Baffert trained, Medina Spirit, tested positive for the regulated corticosteroid betamethasone after winning last year’s Kentucky Derby. Baffert’s attorneys have argued that the positive was due to the use of an ointment to treat a skin condition in the horse, and that Kentucky’s rules do not apply to the use of the cream, which was applied daily up until the day before the Derby, the lawyers have said, under a prescription from Baffert’s vet. The records of those treatments had been posted to veterinary databases available to regulators prior to the Derby, the attorneys have said.

At the Thursday hearing, Wolsing pushed back against the assertion from Baffert’s attorneys that the state’s rules do not apply to topical treatments containing betamethasone, saying that any finding of betamethasone in a horse on raceday is a violation. Wolsing also reiterated that the KHRC believes that the 90-day suspension was appropriate considering Baffert had a number of medication violations in the year leading up to last year’s Derby, including a betamethasone positive in the Kentucky Oaks in 2020, when the race was held in September.

“Those are arguably our two premier races in the state of Kentucky,” said Marc Guilfoil, the executive director of the KHRC, while briefly providing testimony on behalf of the KHRC.

“I agree,” Wingate answered.

One of Baffert’s attorneys, Craig Robertson, disputed the KHRC’s calculations of the number of positives in Baffert horses over the year preceding the Derby, but his main point during the Thursday hearing was to contend that allowing the penalty to go forward without first hearing an appeal amounted to a “death sentence to the career of a Hall of Fame trainer,” citing rules that will require Baffert to disband his stable while the penalty is served.

“There’s no harm to [the KHRC] to let this play out,” Robertson told Wingate. “But there’s tremendous harm to Mr. Baffert.”

Allowing the suspension to go forward, Robertson said, “essentially negates your appeal. You can’t get those days back.”

Wolsing argued that the suspension should be allowed to start because Baffert’s record of violations was “unprecedented,” after acknowledging that the KHRC took an unusual step in denying the stay on appeal. In previous cases where the KHRC has granted stays, Wolsing said, that was because the trainers who had been issued suspensions were “people with one or two violations in their careers.”

“Those contrast sharply with Mr. Baffert,” Wolsing said. “He’s the very definition of a repeat offender.”