NYRA hearing on Baffert scheduled to begin Jan. 24

A hearing to consider a ban of trainer Bob Baffert at the tracks operated by the New York Racing Association will begin Jan. 24, NYRA officials and Baffert’s attorney said Monday.

The start date was decided on Monday during a meeting between attorneys for the New York Racing Association and Baffert presided over by O. Peter Sherwood, a retired New York State Supreme Court justice who is serving as the NYRA-appointed hearing officer. According to officials, the timing of the start will give attorneys ample time to prepare their cases.

NYRA served Baffert with a notice of hearing about a potential ban in September, at the same time that the association announced a set of protocols for the conduct of internal hearings to consider potential actions against racing licensees. NYRA adopted the protocols after a federal judge sitting in New York had stayed a ban that NYRA had previously issued to Baffert.

The hearing process could be lengthy. Under the protocols adopted by NYRA, the hearing officer is required to issue a report with recommendations following the hearing, but the protocols do not require a certain date after the hearing for the report to be produced. The hearing itself is expected to last for several days.

After the report is issued, a panel appointed by NYRA’s president will review the document and “have the discretion to adopt, modify, or reject any or all of the hearing officer’s report.” The panel will have 10 days to come to a decision, which will be final.

NYRA issued its first ban of Baffert in mid-May, shortly after the trainer acknowledged that a horse he trains, Medina Spirit, tested positive for the regulated anti-inflammatory medication betamethasone after winning the Kentucky Derby. NYRA has argued that its proposed ban is justified because of “conduct detrimental to racing,” citing Baffert’s recent history of positives for regulated medications and statements he made following the Derby denying that the horse received betamethasone.

Baffert will argue at the hearing that the positive arose out of the use of a benign ointment in the run-up to the Derby to treat dermatitis on Medina Spirit’s flank, his attorneys have said. The attorneys have said that the use of the ointment was not intended to evade regulations on the drug, which are crafted primarily to address intra-articular injections of the medication.

The positive has not yet been adjudicated by Kentucky regulators, in large part because of delays in testing a split sample from the race. Those delays have arisen because of court rulings that required the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to provide a portion of the split sample to Baffert so that it can be tested for other ingredients in the ointment. His attorneys have argued that the presence of those other ingredients will bolster Baffert’s case, even though regulations on the presence of betamethasone in post-race samples do not contain any exceptions.