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Medina Spirit: The Public, Mainstream Media Reacts

The death of Medina Spirit (Protonico) following a workout Monday at Santa Anita has resulted in a predictable backlash, with at least two media outlets calling for the sport to be banned and readers of some of the nation's most prominent newspapers posting numerous vitriolic comments online.

Here is a sampling of what has been written and said about horse racing following Monday's shocking news:

The New York Post led the charge with Maureen Callahan writing a column with the headline “Medina Spirit's shocking death is yet another reason we should end horse racing.”

“Can you imagine any sport in which human athletes routinely died on the field, in competition, and we simply removed the bodies and kept going? Or one in which aged-out players weren't retired but sent to the slaughterhouse, as about 13,000 Thoroughbreds are annually?” Callahan writes.

She concludes: “The circus is dead. Dogfighting is almost completely eradicated. What will it take for us to save the racehorse?”

Writing for the website Deadspin, Sam Fels authored a story with the headline “Horse racing should be put out of its misery.”

The stories ran some 21 months after the Washington Post published an editorial in March, 2020 calling for the sport to be banned. “No other accepted sport exploits defenseless animals as gambling chips,” the editorial read. “No other accepted sport tolerates the cruelties that routinely result in the injury and death of these magnificent animals. The rot in horse racing goes deep. It is a sport that has outlived its time.”

The editorial appeared shortly after trainers Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro and 25 others were indicted for allegedly taking part in a scheme to dope horses with performance-enhancing drugs.

The coverage in the Washington Post, which has been highly critical of the sport, of Medina Spirit's death was straightforward, but the story evoked a strong response from readers. As of Tuesday afternoon, 616 comments on the story were posted online, and the overwhelming majority of them were unforgiving toward a sport that is clearly dealing with serious public perception problems.

“Horse racing is not a legitimate sport any more than cock fighting or dog fighting is. Just put an end to this,” wrote Avian_Donn.

“Horse racing is as evil as bullfighting,” reader Turqoises wrote.

There were a few favorable comments.

“These comments are ridiculous,” Velvet2 wrote. “Most likely he either had an aortic rupture (the wobbling before he collapsed points to this) or he had a faulty heart valve that stressed his heart, leading it to enlarge and beat irregularly, and then just stop (what seems to have happened to Swale). Neither of these possibilities have anything to do with man-made abuse.”

The story in the New York Times, another media outlet whose coverage of the sport has been overwhelmingly negative, elicited 170 comments.

“It's so sad what trainers and owners do to these beautiful horses to make money from them,” read a post from Ms. Pea. “It's no secret that long-term use of steroids can damage the heart. This whole 'sport' should be banned. It's despicable.”

Leo Moon wrote: “This young horse is dead because he was abused and drugged to make humans rich and satisfy their need for entertainment. It is despicable that this continues in this day and time. This was 100% preventable. We need to go after the Kentucky Derby the way the circus protesters have gone after Ringling Brothers.”

There were 132 comments attached to the Wall Street Journal's coverage of Medina Spirit's death. The Journal attracts a more conservative audience than the Washington Post and the New York Times, so it was no surprise that the comments were, generally less harsh. “I can't believe what I'm reading here,” reader Micheal Trian posted. “I can't believe how 'woke' we have become. I can't believe the Left, using their wacky liberals, has destroyed The Sport of Kings.”

But plenty of Journal readers took the sport to task.

“Inhumane sport… needs to be banned,” wrote srikanth iyer. “The enormous amount of money spent to sustain this ludicrous business can be better spent elsewhere.”

Les Utley wrote: “WHEN is this going to stop? How many horses have to die at Santa Anita and at other tracks before something is done? Drugging, overdosing and pushing these horses beyond their bodily limits is sickening and immoral–all for the amusement of the elites and the gamblers. Despicable.”

Many of the comments posted on Twitter were from horse racing insiders, but several touched upon the reaction of the general public.

“The @TODAYshow posted an article on Medina Spirit & within 30 minutes had 161 comments” wrote Leah Alessandroni. “I read them all. 160 are anti-racing. 1 was pro. That's just a tiny snapshot, the same responses are happening all over social media. TB industry needs to decide if it wants to live or die.”

“As expected, Medina Spirit's death made the national, nightly news,” read a tweet from WelbourneStud. “Who else out there is already fielding a bunch of texts/social media messages from non-horse racing friends asking what is going on with BB, Santa Anita, and horse racing?”

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It Ain’t Over Yet: Bolt D’Oro Connections File Appeal In Justify Scopolamine Case

Just eight days after the California Horse Racing Board decided it would not disqualify Triple Crown winner Justify from his win in the 2018 Santa Anita Derby due to a scopolamine positive, connections of Bolt d'Oro, the runner-up in that race, have filed an official appeal to overturn that decision. According to the Thoroughbred Daily News, CHRB executive director Scott Chaney revealed the appeal at the outset of the board's Thursday meeting, and indicated that the appeal would be considered during a closed-door session on Jan. 21.

“The board of stewards at Santa Anita issued a [Dec. 9] decision in which they concluded that a disqualification was not appropriate,” Chaney said during the CHRB meeting. “I made the decision not to appeal that ruling. The board has since received a request to appeal and overturn that decision from the connections of the second-place finisher in the race in question, Bolt d'Oro. The board will decide whether to entertain that request during the executive session at the January board meeting.”

The CHRB initially faced public outcry when a New York Times report published in September of 2018 revealed that post-race samples from both Justify and his Bob Baffert-trained stablemate Hoppertunity, winner of the 2018 Tokyo City Cup, contained scopolamine. Prior to its publication, the CHRB made the decision in a closed-doors executive session during the summer of 2018 not to pursue disciplinary action or disqualify horses after a cluster of positive tests for scopolamine across multiple barns, which CHRB staff determined was a result of exposure to jimsonweed in hay.

In January of 2020, Bolt d'Oro's owner Mick Ruis filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court asking for a writ ordering the CHRB to set aside its decision to dismiss Santa Anita Derby winner Justify's positive test in the Santa Anita Derby and to order disqualification of Justify with a redistribution of the purse.

The CHRB's settlement of that civil suit included an agreement to file a complaint seeking disqualification of Justify from the 2018 Santa Anita Derby. Connections of Justify and Hoppertunity subsequently filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the stewards from hearing the case. The application for that restraining order was denied.

The hearing was held on Oct. 29, 2020, and the CHRB handed down its decision to dismiss the complaint on Dec. 9.

Now, another closed-door session of the CHRB will determine whether Ruis' appeal will be considered.

The post It Ain’t Over Yet: Bolt D’Oro Connections File Appeal In Justify Scopolamine Case appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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View From The Eighth Pole: Veering Off Into La-La Land

I seriously doubt if trainer Bob Baffert or anyone in his stable knowingly gave scopolamine to Justify prior to his victory in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby on April 7, 2018. But the drug showed up above the threshold limit in post-race testing for both the eventual Triple Crown winner and for Hoppertunity, another Baffert runner, who won the G3 Tokyo City Cup the following day at the Arcadia, Calif., track.

Scopolamine has found its way into California hay supplies via jimson weed, so it's not unreasonable to conclude the positive test was a result of environmental contamination. It's also unlikely that the drug's presence at a low yet impermissible level had any impact on performance.

But rules are rules.

According to California Horse Racing Board rule 1859.5 (Disqualification Upon Positive Test Finding), a positive test of drugs in classes 1, 2 or 3 (as defined by the CHRB) “shall require disqualification of the horse from the race in which it participated and forfeiture of any purse … regardless of culpability for the condition of the horse.”

In April 2018, scopolamine was a Class 3 drug under CHRB rules.

CHRB members, meeting in executive session on Aug. 23, 2018, circumvented those rules by voting to not pursue the matter, acceding to the recommendations of the CHRB's equine medical director, Dr. Rick Arthur, and the board's then-executive director, Rick Baedeker.

There is an old expression that “we don't know what we don't know.” In this case, we don't know how many previous times the board took such actions, stopping an alleged medication violation before it reached the stewards for a hearing. We do know the CHRB has prosecuted numerous cases of positive drug tests that any rational person would assume resulted from environmental contamination.

So what was different about this case?

For starters, by the time this came before the CHRB in August 2018, Justify had a) won the Triple Crown, b) had his breeding rights sold for a record $75 million, and c) been retired from racing. He was also trained by a Hall of Famer who had become the “face” of the sport.

Additionally, there was a can of worms labeled “Derby Points” that some might try to open if Justify was disqualified from the Santa Anita Derby, a race that gave the son of Scat Daddy the points needed to qualify for the Kentucky Derby field.

So the CHRB voted behind closed doors to end the investigation and successfully tamped down what could have been an embarrassing situation – until a September 2019 report by Joe Drape in the New York Times exposed what had happened.

There's another old expression that “it's not the crime, it's the coverup.” Scopolamine positives have been called before in California. Trainers were not sanctioned but their horses disqualified. No one likes when that happens, but it's a matter of following the rules. Maybe the rules need to be changed to accommodate environmental contaminations, but until that happens it isn't right for regulators to circumvent the rules they don't like.

The New York Times article hit as California racing was trying to recover from the high-profile equine fatality spike at Santa Anita earlier in the year that thrust the sport in the national spotlight in a most unflattering way. The handling of the Justify case only poured gasoline onto the regulatory fire.

The controversies riled the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom and dominoes started falling at the CHRB. Chuck Winner had already stepped down as board chairman when the Justify story broke. Vice chair Madeline Auerbach resigned from the board when she was passed over to chair the organization. Executive director Baedeker announced that he was retiring and other staff positions changed. New appointees came from outside the industry and without direct investment in racing or conflicts of interest.

Mick Ruis, who owned Santa Anita Derby runner-up Bolt d'Oro, sued the CHRB in January 2020, claiming he was entitled to the $600,000 first-place money from the race. In July, Ruis reached an agreement to settle the lawsuit when the CHRB said it would file a complaint to conduct a purse disqualification hearing on Justify. That hearing, which also included a complaint filed on Hoppertunity's positive test, was conducted on Oct. 29.

Here's where things start veering off into La-La Land.

The three stewards, John Herbuveaux, Kim Sawyer and Ron Church, did their due diligence sifting through the evidence and testimony. They put together a lengthy findings of fact and timeline, including making note that scopolamine changed from a Class 3 drug to Class 4 months after the Santa Anita Derby and Tokyo City Cup were run. The stewards did all the things you would expect them to do when conducting a hearing of this type and then making a determination.

Then they took the ultimate copout. No matter what the evidence was, no matter what the rules stated, they dismissed the complaint “because the CHRB has already ruled on this matter, in executive session, at the Aug. 23, 2018, meeting.”

Are you kidding me?

Unless this was some kind of carefully orchestrated kabuki theater involving CHRB members, staff and stewards to go through the motions of a hearing in order to satisfy the terms of the settlement agreement with Ruis – which seems highly unlikely – the final order by the stewards is mind-boggling.

If the stewards felt as though the matter was dismissed in August 2018, why did they go to the trouble of conducting a hearing? Couldn't they have sought clarification from legal counsel at the CHRB as to whether or not the matter was settled?

The order by the stewards may not be the final word. Attorney Darrell Vienna, representing Ruis, pointed out that California's Business and Professions Code, section 19517, states the CHRB “may overrule any steward's decision other than a decision to disqualify a horse due to a foul or a riding or driving infraction in a race, if a preponderance of the evidence indicates any of the following:

“1) The steward mistakenly interpreted the law.

“2) New evidence of a convincing nature is produced

“3) The best interests of racing and the state may be better served.

“…Furthermore, any decision pertaining to the distribution of purses may be changed only if a claim is made in writing to the board by one of the involved owners or trainers, and a preponderance of the evidence clearly indicates to the board that one or more of the grounds for protest, as outlined in regulations adopted by the board, has been substantiated.”

Within hours of the decision by the stewards to dismiss the complaint, Vienna filed a claim with the board on behalf of Ruis, asking for the CHRB to overrule the stewards.

The ball is back in the CHRB's court, but these are not the same CHRB members who opted to bury this matter in August 2018.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

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Baffert’s Lawyer: Drape’s `False’ Story `Debunked’

Bob Baffert’s attorney issued a statement Tuesday saying that New York Times reporter Joe Drape’s reporting in 2019 on Justify’s scopolamine positive was a “false story and narrative” which “were definitively debunked” in last week’s California Horse Racing Board hearing on the matter.

The statement from attorney W. Craig Robertson III reads, in full:

“On September 11, 2019, Joe Drape of the New York Times published an article concerning trainer Bob Baffert and Triple Crown-winning horse Justify. The article strongly and inaccurately suggested that Mr. Baffert had intentionally doped Justify with scopolamine in the 2018 Santa Anita Derby, and falsely stated that scopolamine was a performance-enhancing substance. Mr. Drape similarly implied that the California Horse Racing Board, which had investigated the facts surrounding Justify and determined that there had been no wrongdoing, was corrupt and covering up for Mr. Baffert’s alleged misconduct.

“Last week, Mr. Drape’s false story and narrative were definitively debunked. In a public hearing on the Justify case, the California Horse Racing Board, which now consists of members that are entirely different from the allegedly `corrupt’ ones in place in 2018, stipulated that the presence of scopolamine in Justify: (1) was the result of environmental contamination, specifically that Justify was inadvertently exposed to hay containing a naturally growing plant called jimsonweed, which contains scopolamine; and (2) there was no performance-enhancing effect on Justify in the Santa Anita Derby. Thus, it has now been conclusively and legally established that the entire premise of the (2019) New York Times story on Justify was false.

“Mr. Drape’s coverage of Mr. Baffert continues to be inaccurate in other significant respects. For example, recently he has repeatedly accused Mr. Baffert of medication violations in Arkansas and Kentucky involving “banned” substances when, in fact, each of those cases involve lawful, therapeutic medications. These representations are similarly false and must be corrected.”

On October 22, Drape wrote that Gamine had tested positive for a “banned substance” in the Times. Robertson responded at the time, “Betamethasone is a legal, commonly used anti-inflammatory medication. It is not a `banned substance.’ ”

Robertson’s Tuesday email to the media said that Baffert would be issuing his own statement Wednesday.

In August, the CHRB announced that the win by Justify in the 2018 running of the GI Santa Anita Derby would come under official administrative scrutiny by the organization, but that Baffert, the trainer of the eventual undefeated Triple Crown winner, would not have a CHRB complaint lodged against him “due to substantial evidence that the scopolamine resulted from environmental contamination from jimson weed.”

The CHRB has yet to issue a ruling following last week’s scopolamine hearing.

A now-controversial 2018 commission vote to exonerate Justify and Baffert was not publicly disclosed, and took place privately after a detailed investigation that substantiated the environmental contamination by jimsonweed. In roughly the same timeframe in 2018, the CHRB received positive post-race tests for scopolamine on five other horses from other barns, and the CHRB eventually treated them all as unintentional jimsonweed contaminations from ingesting tainted hay.

“This case was correctly decided by the CHRB in 2018. It was a final and binding decision. And nothing has changed since then, and you all should simply affirm that decision so that we can put this matter to bed once and for all,” said Robertson at last week’s hearing. “When that investigation was complete, there were two things that were clear, undisputed and undeniable. Number one, that this was a case of innocent environmental contamination from hay and it was not a case of any intentional administration of any drug or medication. And number two, that the trace levels of scopolamine…had no effect on the performance of these horses and no effect on the races.”

Drape revealed the scopolamine positive in a New York Times article September 11, 2019 in which he wrote, “Justify should not have run in the Derby, if the sport’s rules were followed” and suggested that the investigation had not been detailed at all.

“It decided, with little evidence,” he wrote, “that the positive test could have been a result of Justify’s eating contaminated food. The board voted unanimously to dismiss the case. In October, it changed the penalty for a scopolamine violation to the lesser penalty of a fine and possible suspension.”

Testimony at last Thursday’s hearing indicated that change in classification of scopolamine was already in the works long before Justify’s positive.

In the story on the hearing, the TDN’s T.D. Thornton wrote, “The CHRB, by its own regulation, follows the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) Uniform Classification Guidelines for Foreign Substances and Recommended Penalties when establishing model rules for drugs. The ARCI once classified scopolamine as a Class 3 drug (lower-number classifications are more severe). But in December 2016, the ARCI reclassified it to a lesser Class 4 offense.

“Arthur testified that the CHRB fully intended to follow the ARCI’s model rule that reclassified scopolamine (and other drugs that also changed classes). But since California’s Office of Administrative Law doesn’t allow the CHRB to change rules by automatically referencing another authority’s code, the racing agency has to go through a drawn-out process to make even minute changes such as drug reclassifications. So because of this bureaucratic backlog, scopolamine in 2018 was still technically Class 3 in California, even though Arthur and the CHRB considered it to match the ARCI’s newer Class 4 downgrade.

“Arthur explained how as the equine medical director, he has regulatory leeway to take into consideration mitigating circumstances, and that’s what he did when recommending no initial penalties for the scopolamine positives.”

“It is inherently unfair to hold somebody to a classification that is outdated because of regulatory inefficiency,” Arthur said at the hearing.

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