Testimony continued Jan. 27 in the hearing held by the New York Racing Association to determine whether it can suspend trainer Bob Baffert. NYRA had rested its case Jan. 26, and Thursday's session was comprised of witnesses called by Baffert's attorneys, including Dr. Clara Fenger, board member of the North American Association of Racetrack Veterinarians (NAARV), Dr. Steven Barker, formerly laboratory director for Louisiana's post-race drug testing laboratory, and Baffert himself.
Part of Thursday's proceedings would appear to have previewed Baffert's side of the case in the drug positive of Medina Spirit following the Kentucky Derby. During cross examination, Baffert confirmed that a hearing in the case has been scheduled with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission for Feb. 7.
Baffert and the other witnesses Thursday made reference to the results of extra drug testing on remaining urine samples taken from Medina Spirit by Dr. George Maylin, head of the drug testing laboratory for the New York State Gaming Commission. According to a statement from Maylin read into the record, testing on those samples revealed the presence of betamethasone valerate, which is present in Otomax but not in the injectable form of betamethasone given to horses. It did not reveal the presence of betamethasone acetate, which is the form of the drug that's used in injectable products for horses. The tests also purportedly revealed the presence of clotrimazole, an anti-fungal medication which is also present in Otomax.
Baffert has said Medina Spirit's positive test was the result of Otomax treatment for a troublesome skin rash on the horse's hindquarters. He said on Thursday that the rash was at various times also on the horse's girth area and neck. Initially, Baffert said veterinarian Dr. Vince Baker suggested using a couple of shampoos to try, and when those didn't work on the rash, Baker prescribed Otomax and Dermacloth. Dermacloth is an over-the-counter grooming wipe product designed to combat certain types of skin problems in horses.
Baffert has previously said the rash appeared some time after the Santa Anita Derby, several weeks before the colt's victory in Louisville. He has also said the Otomax treatment ended the day before the Kentucky Derby.
Baffert said one of his first calls after learning about the test was to Baker, but that Baker did not suggest to him that Otomax could be the source of the betamethasone until Monday afternoon, the day after Baffert's press conference announcing the positive test. Baffert represented that Baker was as surprised as Baffert was by the positive test. Baffert said that after Gamine tested positive for the same drug following the 2020 Kentucky Oaks, he ordered his veterinarians to stop using betamethasone for joint injections and that he wanted the drug “out of my barn” after that.
The ointment was applied by a groom, according to Baffert.
Additional highlights from Thursday:
- Both Barker and Fenger testified that the concentrations of the therapeutic medications found in Baffert's horses for the period of time in question could not have had an impact on the horses' performance, or any therapeutic impact on the horses themselves. This is in conflict with Dr. Pierre-Louis Toutain, the expert called by NYRA, who testified on Tuesday regarding betamethasone and phenylbutazone.
- Fenger opined that in many states, the first two violations in question in NYRA's charges, both overages in California for phenylbutazone within a week of each other in summer 2019, would normally have been combined into one ruling. It is common practice in some places to combine violations that occur close together because the commission may not have had the chance to notify the trainer about the first violation before subsequent ones occur, thereby preventing the trainer's ability to change their medication or barn management plans.
- Maylin and Fenger, who worked together on the additional testing of the Medina Spirit samples, used two research horses to help develop new tests for the components of Otomax. Maylin intends to submit some of his findings to a peer-reviewed journal for publication.
- Fenger also questioned the science behind Kentucky's betamethasone threshold, pointing out that it was developed from a study conducted on research horses rather than active racehorses.
[Story Continues Below] - On cross examination from an attorney for NYRA, Fenger was asked about a technique Maylin has described that he said was designed to keep lidocaine or drugs like it localized in an area where it may be injected. Attorney Kelly McNamee said Maylin has testified to the addition of an oil depot and a vasoconstrictor like adrenaline to keep lidocaine from disappearing as quickly from tissues where it's been placed. McNamee never connected that method with anything Baffert has been accused of using. Fenger said she was not familiar with that kind of procedure being used in horses.
- Veterinary records from Baffert's barn show “a lot” of his horses around the time of the 2019 bute violations were given bute two days ahead of a race, according to McNamee. Fenger said this practice, called “pre-racing,” is not standard for all trainers, but is also not unusual and is done even when the horse is not showing signs of soreness or lameness.
- Barker testified to his concern that increased sensitivity of drug testing in racing will eventually result in more damage than benefit to racing.“It's unfortunate that such insignificant findings can result in prosecution,” said Barker, referring specifically to a finding of dextrorphan in Baffert runner Merneith in July 2020. “The mere presence of a drug does not necessarily result from nefarious action … rather than protect the integrity of the sport, such prosecutions continue to damage the image of the industry and trainers, owners, and horses. It is also unfortunate that the state of California does not rely on the review of such data by qualified equine pharmacologists.”
- Barker also said that he is not surprised Baffert, who has a large number of winners and therefore a large number of tested horses, has a number of positive findings. Under the current scheme, Barker said only 20 percent or so of horses in any given jurisdiction are ever tested, which means the rate of positives would be about five times higher if every horse were tested.“The idea that the more successful you are, the more likely you are to go to the test barn, the more likely you are to have trace levels of these drugs detected,” he said.Attorneys for NYRA said Baffert has been cited and paid fines on 14 separate occasions for Bute overages, though that figure may include his time spent training Quarter Horses.
- Baffert admitted that his media tour after announcing Medina Spirit's betamethasone test was probably a mistake, and regretted using the “cancel culture” phrase that appeared in so many headlines after he referenced it on the Dan Patrick Show.“I probably shouldn't have used 'cancel culture,'” he said. “I should've just said knee jerk. The 'cancel culture' was a bad move on my part.”At the time of his mainstream media interviews that week, Baffert said he was extremely emotional, and also blamed the compressed timeframe for some of his public relations response. As in the Arkansas cases of Gamine and Charlatan, Baffert said someone had leaked the drug test results for Medina Spirit to the media, which forced his announcement about the positive in a press conference held outside his barn at Churchill Downs. He did not speculate on the origin of the leak.
- Baffert also testified that he did not hear from NYRA with any questions or clarifications regarding the Medina Sprit case or any of the other drug positives at issue in the time leading up to the racing organization's decision to suspend him.“I was disappointed,” he said. “They were friends of mine. I felt betrayed, in a way. I'd gone up there and really just ran my horses. I wasn't there long, but I always showed up and ran all those races and for them to come out with that, I was a little bit surprised but mostly disappointed.”
- Baffert takes issue with NYRA's characterization that he has had six positives in the timeframe cited by the organization. Because Gamine and Charlatan were ultimately restored to their finish positions in their respective races at Oaklawn Park in 2020 and the suspension handed down by the stewards was vacated, Baffert said he does not believe those incidents should count as positives. The official ruling, which was amended by the full Arkansas Racing Commission, still fined him $5,000 for each test in excess of allowable levels.He also maintains that the Kentucky case of Gamine was an unfair one because veterinarian Dr. Ryan Carpenter gave the horse a betamethasone injection 18 days prior to the 2020 Kentucky Oaks, well outside Kentucky's 14-day stand down guideline.
- Baffert no longer attributes the lidocaine overages in Charlatan and Gamine at Oaklawn to assistant trainer Jimmy Barnes' use of an over-the-counter pain relief patch. He later learned that a third horse on the same race card had a testable level of a metabolite for the drug in its system, although the level was below the state's threshold for calling positives. He also said he had been told by an official there that there had been another cluster of three or four tests showing levels of lidocaine earlier in the meet, also below the threshold.
The hearing continues on Jan. 28.
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