Alan Truex: Baffert gave a banned weed to Justify

LLANO, Texas – With his perfectly balanced white mop of hair and darkest of sunglasses, Bob Baffert is the picture of West Coast serenity.  He is the face of horse racing, which otherwise is utterly faceless. Which goes, of course, for the four-legged stars as well. 

Individual equines will have their white diamond or blaze, but I might not be able to pick out Justify, his most famous trainee, from the other residents of Baffert’s Southern California barn.

That’s because in Baffert’s barn, as with most of his competitors, each resident is treated very well, stall padded with fresh hay, belly full of the finest oats money can buy.

Living on a small ranch with cattle and horses, I can tell you it’s possible to buy hay that does not have jimson weed in it.  Why do I bring up jimson weed? Because this is the root – all too literally — of what is historically the biggest scandal in the most historically scandalous American sport other than boxing.

Baffert is the only active thoroughbred horse trainer who’s won a Triple Crown, and in fact he’s won two of them.  

The first crown, American Pharoah’s in 2015, is safe.  The second one, by Justify in 2018, is now in dispute.

The New York Times’ Joe Drape revealed that the California Horse Racing Board hushed up its finding that Justify’s urine tests before and after his Santa Anita Derby victory showed the colt with more than three times the acceptable amount of a drug called scopolamine.

Administered by a veterinarian, scopolamine can be effective treating digestive problems.  Administered by a trainer looking for a competitive edge, it can improve airflow and change the heart beat to enable a horse to run faster.  

To explain Justify’s dosage of 300 nanograms per milliliter, Baffert issued an unwieldy, unsubstantiated statement saying the “trace amounts of the drug were undoubtedly the result of environmental contamination caused by the presence of jimson weed in feed — a naturally growing substance in areas where hay and straw are produced in California.”

So what’s wrong with this picture?

This was no “trace amount.”  I have doubt Justify would stuff himself with a foul-smelling plant that horses generally prefer to avoid.

Baffert is one of the most media-friendly of horse trainers.  He’s spoken with Drape many times. But when the reporter called him to discuss scopolamine, Baffert refused to be interviewed.  

In my experience as a sports reporter, if a trusted source won’t talk to me it usually means someone’s trying to hide something.  

Baffert made a point in his statement that he “had no input into or influence on the decisions made by the California Horse Racing Board.”

It’s a fact, however, that the chairman of the Board is one of Baffert’s clients, thoroughbred owner and racer Chuck Winner.

Baffert sounds much like football players who test positive for PEDs.  They made an innocent mistake, didn’t realize the medicine they were taking for sinus blockage has a steroid in it.

But it’s Baffert’s professional responsibility to make sure his horses are eating food that’s not contaminated.  Why didn’t the other horses in his barn have this problem? We have to wonder if there was indeed something special about Justify’s feed.

After all, he was a late foal being rushed onto the tail end of the prep trail to the Kentucky Derby.

And it’s not like Baffert has never been implicated in questionable training tactics.  There was that period, 2011-2013, when seven in his stable died, and linkage was made to him administering a thyroid drug, Thyro-L, to all of his horses.  

So we can’t be sure what Baffert would or would not do if he felt his most talented colt needed a chemical boost.

As leery as I am of conspiracy theories, it seems apparent that the California Horse Racing Board decided to let Baffert slide because, if for no other reason, a Triple Crown would bring a publicity boost to the sport.  Maybe a boom in attendance and handle. There was so much to Justify, who could bring fame and wealth to a large industry.

When hearing of the positive test on Justify, Baffert hired an attorney, Craig Robertson, who informed the Board that if his client is suspended or Justify disqualified, litigation will follow “at great taxpayer expense.”

So the Board faced a lose-lose choice.  

It could do the right thing and suspend Baffert, just as it had his main rival in California, Jerry Hollendorfer, for committing the same offense in 2007.

Or the CHRB could ignore the offense, save the taxpayers a few dollars each and bring perhaps $50 million in breeding rights to the owner of Justify.

This is a sport that, much as I love it, seems to have lost its last few shreds of credibility. 

I didn’t think it could get worse than the winner of the Kentucky Derby being disqualified for veering slightly out of his lane on a muddy track when he had a clear lead.  

This is worse.  The sport’s one icon is looking like a cheat. 

Yet I wonder how much it matters.  Cynics might see a world where fact-checking has no value, that truth has no value.  Everybody lies and everybody cheats, and if you’re not cheating you’re not trying.

We’re told that regulation is bad, that it interferes with businesses making money.  The less government the better, since the bill for the bureaucracy goes to the taxpayers.  I’s always about money, revenues, profits. Horses must be willing to sacrifice.