Bob Baffert | Horse Racing Free Tips

Sophomore Doppleganger Tops Field Of Five For Saturday’s San Vicente

Winning from the rail like a seasoned pro in his first start, Doppelganger retains the services of Flavien Prat as he heads a field of five sophomores going seven furlongs in Saturday's Grade 2, $200,000 San Vicente Stakes at Santa Anita. One of three Bob Baffert trainees, Doppelganger, a bay colt by Into Mischief, appears headed to the Kentucky Derby Trail in what will be the 80th running of the San Vicente.

Baffert's Pinehurst, a winner of the G1 Del Mar Futurity in his second start, will no doubt vie for favoritism with Doppelganger as he cuts back in distance following a fifth place finish in the G1 Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

Baffert will also send out McLaren Vale, who broke his maiden at first asking with John Velazquez and will be ridden by Abel Cedillo on Saturday.

Richard Mandella's Forbidden Kingdom, second to highly regarded Messier in a G3 stakes Nov. 14, has plenty of early speed and rates a big chance with Juan Hernandez back aboard.

A $570,000 purchase as a yearling, Doppelganger, who is out of the Quiet American mare Twice the Lady, was shuffled well back in his debut Dec. 11 at Los Alamitos, but was in-hand with Prat as he cruised into contention and responded with an impressive stretch kick when called upon to win off by 3 ½ lengths going six furlongs. Owned by SF Racing, LLC, Starlight Racing, Madaket Stables, LLC, et al, Doppelganger earned an 80 Beyer Speed Figure and appears to have any kind of future.

A first-out maiden winner going five furlongs on Aug. 1 as the 8-5 favorite, Pinehurst was off at 4-1 in the Del Mar Futurity and won with consummate ease by 4 ½ lengths. With regular rider Mike Smith committed to ride eventual winner Corniche in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, John Velazquez took over and although Pinehurst was attentive to the pace, he tired through the lane to be beaten 8 ½ lengths at a mile and one sixteenth.

A $385,000 Keeneland September Yearling, Pinehurst, who is owned by SF Racing, LLC, Starlight Racing, Madaket Stables, LLC, et al, is easily the leading money earner in the field with $272,000 and will be reunited with Smith for what will be his fourth start.

An impressive first-out maiden winner going 5 ½ furlongs on Aug. 21 at Del Mar, Forbidden Kingdom, a $300,000 yearling purchase who is by 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, transitioned to five furlongs on turf in the ungraded Speakeasy Stakes here on Oct. 1 and was third, beaten 3 ¼ lengths as the 9-5 favorite.

Subsequently second, beaten 3 ½ lengths on dirt going seven furlongs by Baffert's Messier in the Grade III Bob Hope Stakes Nov. 14, Forbidden Kingdom will also be making his fourth start on Saturday. Owned by MyRacehorse and Spendthrift Farm, LLC, Forbidden Kingdom is out of the Five Star Day mare Just Louise.

THE GRADE 2 SAN VICENTE WITH JOCKEYS & WEIGHTS IN POST POSITION ORDER

Race 4 of 9 Approximate post time 2 p.m. PT

Forbidden Kingdom—Juan Hernandez—120
Pinehurst—Mike Smith—124
McLaren Vale—Abel Cedillo–120
Doppelganger—Flavien Prat—120
What in Blazes—Tyler Baze–120

The San Vicente, an important prep for the Grade 1, $750,000 Runhappy Santa Anita Derby, is one of three graded stakes on Saturday. First post time for a nine-race card is at 12:30 p.m., with admission gates opening at 10:30 p.m.

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Baffert/NYRA Hearing, Day 2: Social License To Operate, Ethics Of Therapeutic Drugs Debated

The hearing to determine whether the New York Racing Association will be permitted to exclude Hall of Famer trainer Bob Baffert continued through its second day of testimony Jan. 25 with testimony from witnesses on behalf of the racing association.

Tuesday's proceedings were taken up with the remainder of cross-examination of Rick Goodell, an attorney who has represented the New York State Gaming Commission, as well as testimony from Dr. Pierre-Louis Toutain, veterinary pharmacologist, Dr. Camie Heleski, senior lecturer for the University of Kentucky, and Jeffrey Cannizzo, senior director of government affairs for NYRA.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Justice O. Peter Sherwood, who is serving as hearing officer for the proceedings, grew testy at times Tuesday with Baffert's legal team. Cross examination of Goodell resulted in Baffert attorney Clark Brewster asking repeatedly about New York's threshold levels and whether a test under those levels would result in a positive (in New York it might, if the commission has other evidence a medication was given outside of the permitted timeframe). Sherwood also shut down one of Brewster's lines of questioning of Cannizzo, which was focused on the lack of conflict of interest rules for NYRA board members. Brewster seemed focused on the fact that the New York State Gaming Commission does not permit board members or employees to have active ownership interests in racing, while many NYRA board members do. Sherwood reminded Brewster that in his view, previous rulings from U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon have established that NYRA has the legal authority, based on precedence from a 1982 case before the New York State Supreme Court, to rule a trainer off, and that this point is not considered up for debate.

“What I'm saying now, I've told you before,” Sherwood said to Brewster. “I've cited the case Judge Amon cited. I've cited it in written opinions. I've told you that at this hearing but for some reason or another, you're ignoring it.”

Brewster repeatedly thanked Sherwood for putting his feelings about that legal authority into the record.

Toutain was asked to testify to the potential welfare and performance implications of the drugs for which Baffert horses have tested positive since 2019. Toutain resides in France, and is a distance professor for the University of London's Royal Veterinary College.Toutain was asked about phenylbutazone, and whether it's appropriate to use in the course of training horses.

“No,” said Toutain. “The appropriate use is to suppress the pain for horses and not get the horse to compete with an underlying condition. When you treat horses with phenylbutazone, normally you have to stop on the horse.”

Toutain also asserted that the use of bute could increase the risk of injury “because you are masking underlying conditions that can be severe. The purpose of phenylbutazone is to help the horse, not to mask any injuries.”

Toutain agreed that bute, lidocaine, and betamethasone would not enhance a healthy horse's maximum athletic effort, but were instead potentially problematic because of what they could be hiding.

As to corticosteroids like betamethasone, Toutain cited research stating that horses who were treated with corticosteroids had four times greater risk of catastrophic injury, although it was not clear when those administrations occurred in relationship to the injuries or what doses were used. Toutain also pointed out that a finding in blood of a corticosteroid at a low level does not presuppose the origin of the corticosteroid. A low systemic level of the drug could mean it was given intravenously some time before, or it could have emerged as a result of an intra-articular administration. In cases when a corticosteroid is injected into a joint, low levels of the drug will eventually be found circulating in the body but the concentration will always be much higher in the joint that took the injection.

“Just because you detect nothing in the blood does not mean there is nothing in the joint,” he said.

Toutain admitted his field of expertise was pharmacology and not regulation. Although he has been consulted in the construction of regulation for international racing, that is not his primary occupation.
As to lidocaine, Toutain said there is a relatively low threshold for its use because the drug spikes in the blood quickly and dissipates quickly. It likely has maximum effect somewhere in the first hour of an administration, but Toutain said it's often regulated in such a way to prevent administration within 24 hours of a race.
Heleski testified primarily about the social license to operate, a concept that applies to many industries beyond animal sports. Heleski explained that the phrase refers to social or public acceptance which grants permission for an organization to conduct a given activity. This concept has been used in the past to apply to the mining and forestry industries, and has been applied in recent years to equine activities, including horse racing.

Heleski said that in order to tolerate a given equine sport, the public needs to feel the animals are treated appropriately, and that there is accountability and transparency present in the sport. Attorneys for NYRA asked Heleski about the many headlines in mainstream news media which have dogged Baffert in recent years, as well as the Saturday Night Live skit which poked fun at his interview tour after he announced the betamethasone overage for Medina Spirit. These things, she said, could impact the sport's social license to operate.

“Many people will talk about the issue of drugs and medications and they have a big concern,” she said. “They don't necessarily go into the nuance of levels. Most of the time, they feel like if there was a drug or medication noted, it's bad. They put it all under the umbrella of doping.

“If someone is so well known in a certain sport or industry that even the casual racing fan can identify them, they're more likely to make an impact when some news takes place.”

Baffert's attorneys asked Heleski whether it was Baffert's fault that the general public does not grasp the difference between various therapeutic medications. Attorney W. Craig Robertson also questioned the validity of the concept of the social license to operate, since he said it is not an actual, physical license given out by a central authority and seems an amorphous concept.

Heleski pointed to several key problematic areas in racing which she believes detract from the sport's social license to operate — equine deaths, whip use, medication problems, and aftercare. On cross examination, NYRA attorneys pointed out to Heleski that Baffert has had more than 70 horses die in his care since launching his training career.

Following the day's proceedings, a representative of Trident DMG distributed the following statement to media on behalf of Baffert's legal team. According to its website, Trident is a strategic communications, public relations, and crisis management firm. The statement is attributed to Brewster.

“By jumping to false conclusions and ignoring the facts, NYRA is fueling a bandwagon smear campaign against Mr. Baffert for its own private, competitive purposes – an effort that threatens the integrity of the entire industry. Here are five undisputed facts that support why Mr. Baffert's suspension by NYRA should be overturned immediately:

The New York Gaming Commission is the exclusive and only regulatory agency for horse racing oversight in the State of New York. NYRA has no seat at the table for regulating racing.

NYRA's Board is conflicted, comprised of horse owners that directly compete with Mr. Baffert. No wonder they want him banned from New York racing – his horses beat theirs.

The basis for NYRA's attack is to import rulings from other racing venues about the permissible use of medications that are for therapeutic purposes. Not one racing regulatory agency found grounds to suspend or take action against Mr. Baffert for any of the therapeutic medication threshold overages.

Of the top 14 thoroughbred horse trainers in New York State, nearly all have had more medical violations than Mr. Baffert has been accused of and not one has been suspended by NYRA, nor has NYRA even attempted to suspend them. In fact, not one of the allegations against Mr. Baffert relates to a single New York racetrack rule violation, and Mr. Baffert has never had a reported medication positive in the state in his 25-plus years of racing.”

The hearing continues at 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 26. Read our reporting from Day 1 here.

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‘Social Licensing’ The Day Two Focal Point of Baffert/NYRA Hearing

The concept of perception versus reality has been a core plank on both sides of the highly publicized “detrimental conduct” case ever since the New York Racing Association (NYRA) first tried to banish trainer Bob Baffert eight months ago. On Tuesday, the second day of a hearing process that could lead to Baffert's exclusion from New York's premier tracks, the murky interpretation of who should be considered the true victim and which entity is in need of protection from harm rose to the forefront in the form of arguments over “social licensing” that at times played out in tense and pointed fashion.

Although Baffert is the most easily identifiable Thoroughbred trainer in North America, the key witness who testified Jan. 25 was not at all a recognizable name within the sport. Some 7 1/2 hours of testimony and cross-examination from four witnesses were anchored by about 90 minutes of debate regarding the opinions and PhD expertise of Dr. Camie Heleski, a University of Kentucky equine sciences professor who specializes in what the general public thinks of as horse racing.

“If somebody carries a lot of weight, if they have a strong visual branding in a certain piece of the industry, that's going to be noticed by a larger group of the public, a larger group of, let's say, horse racing fans than if it was not such a memorable person,” Heleski testified. She later added that, “Anybody that's paying attention to racing is going to know who Bob Baffert is.”

Heleski explained that in general, the public tends to regard any highly publicized news about pharmaceuticals in horse racing as something that could be damaging to the sport's social licensing, which is a way of terming general acceptance.

“Most of the time, they're simply feeling if there was a drug or a medication violation noted, they feel like it's bad. They kind of put it all under the umbrella of doping,” Heleski said.

And when Kelly McNamee, a lawyer representing NYRA, asked her to tie in the public's collective thought process and how it relates to Baffert's history of equine drug positives, his trainee Medina Spirit's betamethasone overage when winning the 2021 GI Kentucky Derby, and the “over 70 horses that have died under the care of Mr. Baffert,” Heleski didn't hesitate to answer that all of those things combined could adversely affect racing's social license to operate.

“I think drug and medication [positives] from a very prominent person carry more weight than people that are not followed as closely…” Heleski said. “[And] if a trainer has a large number of deaths in their stables, that's going to be looked on poorly.”

But under stern cross-examination from Baffert's lead lawyer, W. Craig Robertson III, the University of Kentucky professor at times seemed overwhelmed when challenged to explain how it could be Baffert's fault that the general public doesn't understand the difference between therapeutic medications and doping.

Robertson also hammered home points about Baffert's history of awards for sportsmanship and good deeds within the industry, plus his well-documented contributions to aftercare. He wanted Heleski to explain how, if Baffert is such an allegedly detrimental presence who could hurt NYRA, why didn't any activists protest his presence at Saratoga last summer, and why did the track enjoy record betting handles at that meet despite Baffert trainees being in the entries?

Robertson also attempted to dismantle Heleski's “amorphous” concept of social licensing, which, she admitted, has nothing to do with an actual “license” that a person or entity could apply for based on regulated standards, like a racing license.

But assuming such a concept exists, Robertson asked Heleski if it wasn't also part of NYRA's obligation to treat all trainers fairly as part of that social license to operate.

“They should treat trainers fairly, yes,” Heleski agreed.

And if NYRA singled out one trainer–like Baffert–for allegedly unfair punishment, Robertson wanted her opinion on whether “the public might not like that, either. That could hurt a social license to operate, couldn't it?” Robertson queried.

NYRA's legal team objected to that line of questioning, and hearing officer O. Peter Sherwood wouldn't allow Heleski to answer the question.

Baffert himself was not called upon to speak during the day-long proceedings in New York City. On the Zoom webcast made available by NYRA to the media, the Hall-of-Fame trainer could occasionally be glimpsed sitting alongside his lawyers in a conference room, dressed in a dark sport coat and open-collared white shirt.

Although his facial expressions were hidden behind a mask for pandemic precautions, Baffert's posture suggested tedium more than anxiety. He generally kept his hands folded in front of him, sometimes absently working his thumbs together repetitively while occasionally reaching up to flick his thick, silver-white hair off his forehead. For the most part, he looked more like a gent waiting for a bus than a seven-time Derby-winning trainer waiting to find out if he'd be exiled from one of America's most prominent racing circuits.

In previous legal pleadings that failed to keep Baffert's hearing from happening at all, his attorneys have described these proceedings as a “fait accompli.” Yet despite the fact that NYRA came up with the newly invented process for holding the hearings, the list of charges against Baffert, and was responsible for selecting the hearing officer who will decide Baffert's fate, a federal judge ruled last week that NYRA has a right to move ahead in that manner.

NYRA had outright banished Baffert May 17, 2021, in the wake of Medina Spirit's still-not-adjudicated Derby drug positive, noting that four other Baffert trainees had tested positive for medication overages in roughly the year before that. On July 14, a federal judge granted Baffert a preliminary injunction that allowed him to race at Saratoga, Belmont and Aqueduct. That injunction has since been made permanent, but with the legal stipulation that NYRA must afford Baffert a hearing process before deciding whether to kick him out or not.

NYRA is charging that Baffert's alleged conduct is or has been “detrimental” to three entities: 1) The best interests of racing; 2) The health and safety of horses and jockeys; 3) NYRA business operations.

Dr. Pierre-Louis Toutain, a France-based veterinarian considered an expert in pharmacology and toxicology, testified earlier Tuesday for 1 3/4 hours.

Some of Toutain's testimony tended to drag, in part because he was asked to offer definitions of and uses for phenylbutazone, lidocaine and betamethasone, three of the substances that NYRA purports are related to Baffert's alleged wrongdoing. Toutain also good-naturedly apologized a number of times for English not being his first language as he testified remotely while on a six-hour European time difference.

Toutain provided one of the lighter moments of the day when he politely interrupted a drug question from one of Baffert's attorneys, Clark Brewster, to ask, “Are you a scientist or a lawyer?”

When Brewster replied that he was a lawyer, that cued Toutain to know he shouldn't give too technical an answer,

“Ah, so I have to explain simply–okay!”

General laughter broke some of the inherent tension.

But there was no hint of humor from anyone in the room when a NYRA attorney, Hank Greenberg, asked Toutain if the presence of 21 picograms of betamethasone in Medina Spirit's post-Derby blood would have had the capacity to affect his performance.

“Yes, definitively,” Toutain replied.

But Toutain had been talking strictly about an intra-articular injection of betamethasone, which he said was the prevailing way that drug is administered to horses. So when it was Brewster's turn to cross-examine Toutain, he made sure to ask about betamethasone contained within a topical salve or ointment for a skin rash, which is how Baffert has alleged that the betamethasone found its way into Medina Spirit.

“Topical? I am not sure they use it [that way],” Toutain answered.

Toutain then seemed to be confused about whether Brewster was asking if betamethasone was sometimes administered via patch, like lidocaine (which the attorney was not asking).

Brewster then quickly ended his cross-examination of Toutain.

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‘A Wrecking Ball … To Integrity’: Lawyers For Baffert, NYRA Trade Barbs On Day One Of Exclusion Hearing

There's going to be a lot to unpack in this week's hearing of the New York Racing Association versus trainer Bob Baffert.

In opening statements made by attorneys for the respective sides on Jan. 24, representatives of each made clear that they see a key two-year period in Baffert's career very differently.

Henry M. Greenberg, shareholder in Greenberg Traurig and attorney for NYRA, laid out the organization's frustration with Baffert's recent history of therapeutic drug violations and also his handling of those violations in the national and trade media, highlighting what NYRA sees as a refusal to consistently accept responsibility for those violations.

“What this case is about and what the evidence will show is how one man — this man, the respondent — took a wrecking ball over a one-year period to the integrity of the sport that was so good to him for so many years,” said Greenberg. “He sullied and soiled, in one year, 365 days, three of the great races in America — the Arkansas Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, and the Kentucky Derby. Throughout that period, not once did he take responsibility for his actions, did he express contrition. Time and again, again and again, six times, he would blame others to try to avoid responsibility for his own actions.

“In 2020 and 2021, the only Triple Crown he's responsible for is destroying three Grade 1 races.”

On the first day of the hearing, Greenberg tracked the changes in Baffert's responses to Medina Spirit's post-Kentucky Derby betamethasone overage in the national media — from the trainer denying the horse received the drug at all in a press conference he called after learning of the overage to his insistence days later that the overage was due to the administration of a topical ointment — as well as his representations that other overages, such as Gamine and Charlatan's lidocaine tests in Arkansas and Merneith's dextrorphan test in California, were due to environmental contamination.

“The evidence will show NYRA had an obligation to act,” Greenberg said. “It had an obligation to protect the sport of Thoroughbred racing and its integrity … Racetrack operators like NYRA and Churchill Downs have a social license, you will hear, with the public.”

Attorneys for Baffert say NYRA's objections are overblown and beyond the organization's authority.

“The facts in these case are going to be nothing like what you just heard,” said W. Craig Robertson in his opening statement, following Greenberg's. “Bob Baffert is one of the most respected individuals in racing not just now, but in all time. NYRA, which they've just started, is going to throw at you innuendo, speculation and downright distortions. What I'm going to focus on are facts.”

Robertson pointed out that the drug positives at the heart of NYRA's case — six picked up in a span of 14 months from July 2019 to September 2020 — are for therapeutic substances whose thresholds are measured in small concentrations. Further, he said, racetracks should not be allowed to take regulatory action against a licensee.

“The actions being taken by NYRA are unprecedented,” he said. “You're the only thing standing between NYRA and [this suspension] happening.

“I'm not asking that you treat him any better than any other trainer. I'm just asking that you don't treat him any worse.”

Robertson also chastised NYRA for taking action against Baffert before a ruling has been made in the Kentucky Derby betamethasone case. According to Baffert's attorneys, no hearing has yet taken place in that case before the Kentucky stewards. The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission would not confirm to the Paulick Report last week whether one had been scheduled yet.

Only one witness was called to the stand in the first day of testimony — Rick Goodell, a regulatory attorney who has represented the New York State Gaming Commission in many drug and other rule violations cases over the past 20 years. Part of Goodell's duties in New York were to recommend potential penalties for various rule violations, including drug violations. Greenberg asked Goodell to run through the list of Baffert's drug positives and respective penalties in the context of his experience working for the state of New York. In the case of a lidocaine positives, which comprised two of the six violations at question, Goodell said he would have expected to pursue a 45-day suspension in each case, but offer the trainer 30 for their first lidocaine violation if they agreed not to pursue an appeal. In the case of phenylbutazone, which accounted for two more of the six violations, he expected to pursue 14 but offer a trainer seven days' suspension if they agreed not to appeal.

All told, Goodell said a trainer with Baffert's record in New York would have racked up 240 days' suspension if he did not decline to appeal cases. Baffert did not serve days for any of the six.

(Those six overages were a phenylbutazone from a July 27, 2019 race at Del Mar; a phenylbutazone from an Aug. 3, 2019 race at Del Mar; two overages of 3-hydroxylidocaine at Oaklawn May 2, 2020; one dextrorphan in a July 25, 2020 race at Del Mar, and a betamethasone in the 2020 Kentucky Oaks in September. The Medina Spirit test is not counted towards the six since it hasn't yet been adjudicated.)

Goodell also said that by his reading of the current draft of proposed regulations of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA), the same record in the same period of time could result in a suspension as long as 18 months.

Of course, as Baffert attorney Clark Brewster pointed out, none of these violations took place in New York under current New York regulations, nor did they take place under HISA regulations, which are still in development. It remains somewhat unclear what could have been called a positive in New York because Goodell said New York keeps a document with drug testing thresholds but that Dr. George Maylin, director of the drug testing lab for New York state, maintains the right to call a positive if he believes a sample indicates a drug was given outside the regulated timeframe, even if it's under the threshold.

Brewster and Robertson also suggested that NYRA's actions here could be motivated by key New York racing personalities who may be “jealous” of Baffert and his success, or tired of losing to him. Goodell maintained he was not qualified to speculate on that.

Goodell's testimony continues on Jan. 25. The hearing is projected to take three to five days total.

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