AMERICAN racing was again the subject of a major drugs scandal this week when the news broke on Sunday morning that the Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit had tested positive for a banned substance.
The Bob Baffert-trained colt was found to have 21 picogrammes per millilitre of blood of betamethasone, an anti- inflammatory medication that is a Class C drug in Kentucky. It is one of the most commonly used corticosteroids in racing, but the drug is currently not permitted to be administered within 14 days of a race and no amount is allowable in Kentucky.
Baffert’s team held a press conference at the barn in Churchill Downs last Sunday claiming innocence and claiming to have no knowledge of how the substance showed up in Medina Spirit’s ‘A’ sample.
After Churchill Downs management said it would not accept entries from Baffert until the matter was investigated, the trainer appeared on national televisions calling the Churchill Downs statement “pretty harsh”. He said: “This America is different, it’s a cancel culture kind of thing.”
He maintained that the amount of the substance that was in the horse “wouldn’t have had any effect on the horse anyway.” Trainers, he said, were being unfairly blamed due to the stringency of the testing at “ridiculously low levels” and that “Medina Spirit is a deserved champion and I will continue to fight for him.”
When asked by the Fox News presenter he was adamant: “I did not cheat to win the Kentucky Derby.”
Medina Spirit and his stable companion Concert Tour were on their way to Pimlico for the Preakness and it was announced mid-week that Medina Spirit would be allowed run, subject to a pre-race test.
The ‘B’ sample analysis result from the Derby is expected to take a few more weeks to return.
It was the fourth high-profile test failure for the Baffert barn in the last three years. The 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify tested positive for scopolamine after winning the Santa Anita Derby but an explanation of environmental contamination was accepted by the California officials.
Last year two of Baffert’s top performers, Charlatan and Gamine, tested positive for lidocaine, a local numbing agent, after winning at Oaklawn but both were allowed keep the races after a hearing. Baffert’s defence was that transfer from a pain patch worn by assistant trainer Jimmy Barnes had caused the positives in the two horses.
Later in the year, Gamine again produced a positive test for betamethasone after she had finished third in the Kentucky Oaks. Baffert’s defence team said she was given the drug 18 days before the race and it had not cleared her system.
“Do better”
“With Gamine and the betamethasone, we did everything by the rules and we still got in trouble,” said Baffert said last year while stating “I vow to do everything in my power to do better.”
By mid-week an explanation for Medina Spirit’s positive test was discovered by the Baffert team. The colt had a skin rash on his rear end and had been treated with an anti-fungal ointment named Otomax which contains betamethasone. The treatment had been applied from the time the colt had run in Santa Anita Derby until the day before the Kentucky Derby. The ointment is labelled to contain the banned drug so the ‘explanation’ drew further criticism.
Baffert returned to California leaving assistant Jimmy Barnes in Pimlico to supervise the two Preakness runners who passed their initial pre-race drug testing .