What? You can’t wager on trainers
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Interesting news from Paulick Report. https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/spendthrift-farm-to-hit-the-pause-button-on-relationship-with-bob-baffert/
Just a small number of horses but a big name. Good for Spendthrift, wondering who else may follow.
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He may not be well known to the general public, thanks to the media who is Baffert Blind, but the racing industry is aware of Mr. Sadler.
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Thirty days of applying topical betamethazone. That must of been one heck of a case of dermatitis. 
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I think I understand what you mean.
He is a media “favorite”,gets many high profile owners, and their horses that run in big races, and thus his drug violations have been front page news in the non-racing media. Very bad for the racing industry.
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Spendthrift is the engine behind My Racehorse. No doubt they’d rather not scare off potential investors.
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As a MyRacehorse owner and being in the various Facebook groups there’s a very strong contingent that is all about standing behind BB and “the world is out to get him!”. Then there’s the rest of us who are waiting it out and shaking our heads in disbelief that anyone can believe that Medina Spirit is not going to be DQed.
For the record, there were 3 MyRacehorse horses with Baffert and all were pulled. There’s another 2yo that was going to head his way that is now currently on “pause”.
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Top pic was taken Derby week. Bottom photo is today at Pimlico.
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I think it wasn’t about future investors but the current investors. The microshares are offered after a review and approval by the SEC. I suspect this played a large part in pulling at least the MRH horses from BB. While investing in these microshares is a risk, when a trainer of the microshare horses keeps testing positive with a possible subsequent DQ of a horse impacting both purse monies as well as potential value of the horse for breeding… I suspect not a good idea.
Sure would like to have been a fly on the wall for the Spendthrift - MRH - SEC (I suspect) conversations.
FB groups can say all they want about standing behind BB, the fiduciary risk for at least MRH as well as Spendthrift (getting dragged through any mud if a MRH/Spendthrift BB-trained horse was DQd from a win)… not pretty.
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And he didn’t know?
Looks like dirt, but whatever. No excuses. People are paying him the big money to train their horses. Too many episodes of what is, at best, incompetent management of very expensive (for the owner) animals.
So maybe the TC schedule should be revisited to allow adequate time between them to deal w split samples and retests and consent agreements.
Geez.
Baffert would know that his horse would be tested … so why would he give drugs knowing the would get a test…?
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IMO, no. The race schedule should stay the same. Why on earth should raced be reschedule because trainers might be giving their horses prohibited medications that show up in testing and we need to allow split testing.
BB just needs to stop this sh*t. He’s been the big name in the news and has managed to suck up to TSG when other trainers like Hollendorfer got screwed over by TSG (IMO) particularly compared to BB managing to skate on just about everything.
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Well if the plan is to rely on characters like baffert to clean up his act, good luck.
The races are so close that horses are running while tests are not complete. If you want clean sport create a structure to enforce it. I guess that’s going to be testing. It seems the testing can’t be done within 2 weeks. How sacred is the schedule, really?
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The first test came back within a week so testing can be done. Still don’t know why the split takes so much longer.
Instead of adjusting schedules so Slick Bob is covered… how about spanking Mr Baffert hard enough that not only does he sit up and listen but other trainers do as well.
Maybe some sort of out of competition testing… that has helped in many other sports. True enough some meds will test but define allowable out of competition levels or, novel idea, minimal drugs other than analgesics. Horses are athletes, they are entitled to aspirin. But, move towards no drugs.
Didn’t see UCI/cycling redo the world cycling level races - nope, they added more testing. Trainers need to stop be catered to.
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FEI does out of competition testing of both horse and rider. Horse testing is intricate due to out of competition drugs allowed and those that are not. Same, at a lesser level, with human drug tests.
Racing better pull itself together or racing will be toast. Having Baffert be the big deal of racing in the media, has been an unfortunate problem for years now.
The general public cares nothing about racing, until the big races, and we all know this.
However, as long as these slick dudes can convince the public that they have no clue about how the horses, that they are paid the big bucks to train, (here’s lookin’ at you Bob) are testing positive for drugs that should not be present, they will continue to get away with it.
They can only play stupid for so long, until people begin to realize that they really are either truly stupid, or pretending to be stupid, neither of which is acceptable .
Again, now racing is up against PETA , the anti-animal folks, so racing better get themselves together and start acting like intelligent adult horsemen/horsewomen.
We as horsepeople have not done enough to police our own and that is coming back to haunt us in a big way.
I hope the racing world won’t let the idiots bring them down, but the longer people like Baffert get away with breaking drug rules the quicker the American TB will be history.
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In the photos, I see raised, placque lesions with some loss of hair. Still, Mr. Baffert has care, custody and control, so it’s his job to know what’s going on with the horse.
A quick web search while waiting for a meeting to start, showed that Otomax is used on horses. Did the sample reveal anything other than betamethasone? Because Otomac also has Gentimicin and Clotrimazole. IF, Otomax was given day of the race, the other two drugs should be present.
When I was supposed to be at lunch, I researched the metabolism of betamethasone. According to a 1994 British Medical Journal article comparing half-life of oral and topical Betamethasone, the topical has a half-life of 16.6 hours.
Otomax has 1 gram of Betamethasone. IF the human study is valid in equines, one application of Otomax would degrade to a 20ish picogram serum value 16 days later. It appears to me that serial applications over several weeks would result in a higher levels.
Personally, I doubt picograms of anything affect performance. We used to discuss this in the medical lab where I worked. Unfortunately, the technology has evolved faster than policies.
Someone should study and publish in a peer-reviewed publication, the threshold for therapeutic effects of topicals in horses.
I’m surprised that big time, high profile racehorse trainers aren’t doing periodic drug testing of their horses. Especially for such an important race, it would be good to have another set of samples. While normally rare (still shaking my head at USEF’s chain of custody debacle), labs do sometimes make mistakes. Doesn’t seem to be the case here.
I feel terrible for the horse and his connections. It’s a shame the $1000 horse who made good isn’t the story.
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And so it is that most trainers are able to abide by the rules. It doesn’t matter if the level of the drug is performance enhancing or not.
The drug in question is not allowed to be in the horse. Period. Not that difficult for any competent trainer to comprehend.
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I think there are real limits on the number of labs licensed and staffed up to do the testing. Those tests prob are more detailed and vary in method than the initial ones. Think abt all the dozens of drugs that need to be tested for and that labs need to be ready to go on any of them on any day with the techs, the reagents, equipment etc. And some tests might take a number of hours or days to do. It’s not practical to be on 100% standby all the time. I’m guessing that’s part of the explanation for the time needed for these.
This is not abt ‘covering’ baffert. He absolutely shld be disciplined severely. All the sloppy ones/cheaters shld. But if you are going to treat these races as related rather than just a list of graded stakes, you can’t have dq’d or likely dq’d horses running while waiting for test results. I know nobody cares what I think, so JMO applies. 
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Associations have to be careful what rules they have and how to go about enforcing them.
Their lawyers decide some of that at in some instances, avoiding litigation is more important, so they have to do what they can do with that in mind and no more.
The AQHA learned long ago how deep some pockets are when someone wants to sue them.
The association lost way more than the ruling they tried to enforce, “the white rule lawsuit”.
It was struggling after that for a while, other horse associations looking to that alarmed, the JC one.
If the second test comes up clean and they didn’t let the horse continue to the next race, what do we think will happen?
Testing rules and making testing as fast as possible would help, but is not yet here, it seems.
This controversy with the world looking on is not helping anyone.
Bad PR all around in a world looking for the next controversial story.
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