Medina Spirit fails drug test

[Bluey]

Those of us that have been training forever tend to look at injecting with suspicion.
We didn’t need that, must be some are not training right.

Really, we didn’t have the knowledge, techniques and medications safe to inject joints then.
Last two decades plus, injecting is more common, in horses but also in humans.
Youngsters in sports, top athletes, weekend warriors and everyday person with some problem gets injected.

I had a hip injected twice, a thumb, a knee and a shoulder also.
Worked for hip, thumb and knee, didn’t for shoulder, had to have surgery anyway.

While some may misuse injecting, I doubt that it is as common to misuse as some think.

We don’t know yet that a joint was injected here.

[Texarkana]

Tapping joints on racehorses is incredibly common practice. For some barns, you could unfortunately call it a routine practice. Better horsemen understand the risk/reward and are more discriminating about resorting to joint injections.

[Ghazzu]

IIRC, the use of betamethasone in topical corticosteroid-containing preparations is partly due to its being poorly absorbed systemically.
At least that was the sales pitch from the drug reps back when Gentocin spray first came out.

I’ve been poking around a bit in the dermatology literature, and, even though it’s the human lit, there are some concerns about chronic topical use that would make me think twice about using it for weeks, as BB claims was being done. (nevermind the common sense that if a medication fails to have an effect, you reassess and perhaps try something else?)

[ASB_Stars]

Well, I can’t say that this is unexpected. Could the owner’s (of any horse he has had in training) be next? He could tap out just on legal fees.

Horseplayers File Lawsuit Against Baffert, Zedan

[ASB_Stars]

@Bluey

Those of us that have been training forever tend to look at injecting with suspicion.
We didn’t need that, must be some are not training right.

Really, we didn’t have the knowledge, techniques and medications safe to inject joints then.
Last two decades plus, injecting is more common, in horses but also in humans.
Youngsters in sports, top athletes, weekend warriors and everyday person with some problem gets injected.

And Sir Barton was reputed to run “coked to the eyeballs”. Different times see paradigm shifts in management of horses, medications, and horse racing.

[Willesdon]

BB seems to have changed his story/excuse at least three times since the news broke. I suspect it is all about “plausible deniability” in the forthcoming court cases.

[Where_sMyWhite]

This also might be a slippery slope… does this mean that any time a trainer tests positive more than once, they may be open to a suit??

[foggybok]

@Maythehorsebewithme

I guess if those test are positive, the horse will be out of the Preakness.
Is it odd that he was + on May 1 and - on May 6th? Or did the stuff clear?

Weirder and weirder.

It’s not odd. The 20 pg/ml value on the 1rst is consistent with a therapeutic dose given ~3 days earlier (not saying that’s how it got there, it could theoretically have come from the ointment). How much would clear following the first test would depend on if he continued to receive any after the derby. If not, by the 6th, you would expect the blood levels to diminish so that it would be likely under detection levels. That’s 5 days later so enough time for the drug level to be reduced 1000 fold.

[Mara]

@Where_sMyWhite

@punchy

When you ‘train’ hundreds of horses at different tracks around the country,

I would be surprised if BB had more than 100 horses total in all his barns. Yes, he does run horses at different tracks around the country but he’s primarily a So Cal trainer and for many of his horses, they ship in for a big race or two and then ship back to So Cal.

He’s getting no sympathy from me.

Then there’s Aidan O’Brien…his numbers in training aren’t Baffert-esque, and he doesn’t have to cold call to get clients. Flip side is he trains what he’s given by Coolmore and partners. He gets some input at the sales, true, but mostly it’s home cooking. I don’t know his win percentage but I imagine it’s comparable to Baffert’s.

He knows the names of all of his horses and makes it a point to know all of his staff by name.

For a long time I’ve been gravitating towards racing on the other side of the Atlantic. Flame suit on but I think the fact that racing there doesn’t depend on claiming as its base makes it a cut above what we have here. Of course, their drug policy is “don’t do it, any of it, we don’t care who you are and if your horse tests positive we don’t care why - you’re getting days and a fine and your horse is DQ’d”.

[Zonderpaard]

I’m sure baffert is beyond relieved that the latest test came back clean AND before the split sample from the Derby.

If MS wins tomorrow and the split sample turns out dirty it’s gonna be messy.

[SMK]

@Ghazzu

IIRC, the use of betamethasone in topical corticosteroid-containing preparations is partly due to its being poorly absorbed systemically.
At least that was the sales pitch from the drug reps back when Gentocin spray first came out.

I’ve been poking around a bit in the dermatology literature, and, even though it’s the human lit, there are some concerns about chronic topical use that would make me think twice about using it for weeks, as BB claims was being done. (nevermind the common sense that if a medication fails to have an effect, you reassess and perhaps try something else?)

That’s certainly the pitch for topical antibiotics, especially aminoglycosides. What I was reading for topical corticosteroids is that it’s less than 2%, but skin abrasions could certainly change that in unpredictable ways.

I happen to work in chronic infections, though chiefly lung infections, we collaborate to do work on chronic wounds. I actually work specifically in antibiotic resistance (mostly with aminoglycosides), and in a system where the typical course for a patient is 28 days on/28 off/repeat for life. But this is life saving treatment, and I’m also a bit baffled that someone would continue for 30 days without seeing a major improvement. They can use very high concentrations of abx in those topicals because there is almost no absorption, but the abx selection pressure is pretty darn high after 30 days. And fungicides are downright nasty, as they’re designed to kill eukaryotes, even though a lot of horse people seem to apply them without much thought.

Sorry, most of that has nothing to do with a positive corticosteroid test, except the absorption aspect. But this is what I spend most of my waking day thinking about.

[halo]

Scollay: A penalty is meant to be a deterrent so I think the penalty structure is one of the things that HISA is going to have to look at. If the penalty just becomes the cost of doing business all we’ve done is increase the cost of doing business.

[Willesdon]

@Mara

…

Then there’s Aidan O’Brien… I don’t know his win percentage but I imagine it’s comparable to Baffert’s.
…
For a long time I’ve been gravitating towards racing on the other side of the Atlantic. Flame suit on but I think the fact that racing there doesn’t depend on claiming as its base makes it a cut above what we have here. Of course, their drug policy is “don’t do it, any of it, we don’t care who you are and if your horse tests positive we don’t care why - you’re getting days and a fine and your horse is DQ’d”.

The top Irish and UK trainers are averaging about 20 - 25 %

The BHA policy on steroids is a total ban from when the foal is registered with Weatherbys until the horse officially retires from racing. As well as testing on the race course there is additional ‘any time’ testing at the training yards that are scattered across the UK. At Cheltenham Racecourse there is a paddock where the public can watch the testing process. Trainers are the Responsible Person and they pay the penalty.

In 2013 a Newmarket trainer, working for one of the Big Names, was caught red-handed smuggling steroids from Europe into the UK in his private plane. 22 horses in his yard subsequently tested positive for steroids. He was banned from racing 3 days later (can’t recall, off the top of my head, if it was for 8 years or life). It was after that incident that the total ban on steroids was introduced.

[Mara]

@Willesdon

@Mara

…

Then there’s Aidan O’Brien… I don’t know his win percentage but I imagine it’s comparable to Baffert’s.
…
For a long time I’ve been gravitating towards racing on the other side of the Atlantic. Flame suit on but I think the fact that racing there doesn’t depend on claiming as its base makes it a cut above what we have here. Of course, their drug policy is “don’t do it, any of it, we don’t care who you are and if your horse tests positive we don’t care why - you’re getting days and a fine and your horse is DQ’d”.

The top Irish and UK trainers are averaging about 20 - 25 %

The BHA policy on steroids is a total ban from when the foal is registered with Weatherbys until the horse officially retires from racing. As well as testing on the race course there is additional ‘any time’ testing at the training yards that are scattered across the UK. At Cheltenham Racecourse there is a paddock where the public can watch the testing process. Trainers are the Responsible Person and they pay the penalty.

In 2013 a Newmarket trainer, working for one of the Big Names, was caught red-handed smuggling steroids from Europe into the UK in his private plane. 22 horses in his yard subsequently tested positive for steroids. He was banned from racing 3 days later (can’t recall, off the top of my head, if it was for 8 years or life). It was after that incident that the total ban on steroids was introduced.

I recall when that happened, and he’s just been reinstated, I think, so it’d have been 8 years. Of course Sheikh Mohammed denied knowing anything about it.

[Mardi1]

Let’s hope so.

[skydy]

@Mara

@Willesdon

@Mara

…

Then there’s Aidan O’Brien… I don’t know his win percentage but I imagine it’s comparable to Baffert’s.
…
For a long time I’ve been gravitating towards racing on the other side of the Atlantic. Flame suit on but I think the fact that racing there doesn’t depend on claiming as its base makes it a cut above what we have here. Of course, their drug policy is “don’t do it, any of it, we don’t care who you are and if your horse tests positive we don’t care why - you’re getting days and a fine and your horse is DQ’d”.

The top Irish and UK trainers are averaging about 20 - 25 %

The BHA policy on steroids is a total ban from when the foal is registered with Weatherbys until the horse officially retires from racing. As well as testing on the race course there is additional ‘any time’ testing at the training yards that are scattered across the UK. At Cheltenham Racecourse there is a paddock where the public can watch the testing process. Trainers are the Responsible Person and they pay the penalty.

In 2013 a Newmarket trainer, working for one of the Big Names, was caught red-handed smuggling steroids from Europe into the UK in his private plane. 22 horses in his yard subsequently tested positive for steroids. He was banned from racing 3 days later (can’t recall, off the top of my head, if it was for 8 years or life). It was after that incident that the total ban on steroids was introduced.

I recall when that happened, and he’s just been reinstated, I think, so it’d have been 8 years. Of course Sheikh Mohammed denied knowing anything about it.

It was Sheikh Mohammed’s Dubai Government private plane. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/sep/29/sheikh-mohammed-inquiry-drugs-dubai

That was , unfortunately , a sad example of how much the British racing economy is dependent on Darley/Godolphin for their very existence at this point in time.

[Sandysmom]

@ASB_Stars

And Sir Barton was reputed to run “coked to the eyeballs”. Different times see paradigm shifts in management of horses, medications, and horse racing.

Read the Blister Jones stories by John Taintor Foote about racing in the early 1900s. Great stories but apparently doping was quite common in the days before drug testing was feasible.

[Ghazzu]

Weekend Update: Bob Baffert on Medina Spirit’s Failed Drug Test - SNL

[Event_Horse]

I just have to say - I really appreciate this forum. The posts I’ve seen are by true horse people who think of the horse’s well-being first, are willing to read up / research topics, and use common sense.

There are 3 or 4 Baffert groupies (who probably don’t know a fetlock from a forelock) that are posting all over the various MyRacehorse Facebook pages about how unfair Baffert is being treated.

I love the people on here who know to read a label for banned substances, who know that it doesn’t make sense to keep using a topical treatment for a month if you don’t see results in a week or two, and who know what joint injections are.

Thanks for letting me vent. Just have to say - you guys rock.

P.S. I think some of these people are the same as the Chromies.

[Texarkana]

@Event_Horse

There are 3 or 4 Baffert groupies (who probably don’t know a fetlock from a forelock) that are posting all over the various MyRacehorse Facebook pages about how unfair Baffert is being treated

They are all over the internet, period.

I’d probably be defending Baffert myself if this wasn’t the 5th time this happened within a few months. On top of that, each time he acts like a total fool trying to place blame and play the victim. When you are the public face of the sport, that’s a problem for everyone.

It is not lost on me that Baffert has never had such an extensive problem with medication overages prior to the past year. I don’t know what is going on. If you told me there was a PETA plant making mayhem for him, I wouldn’t even be surprised. But Baffert can control how he reacts when these things happen. When your reactions are so bad SNL makes a skit about them, well, here’s your sign…