THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019 0 N A25
Derby, on May 5. While the colt
won at Santa Anita, the failed drug
test would mean disqualification
and forfeiture of both the prize
money and the entry into the Ken-
tucky Derby.
None of that happened, though.
Test results, emails and internal
memorandums in the Justify case
show how California regulators
waited nearly three weeks, until
the Kentucky Derby was only nine
days away, to notify Baffert that
his Derby favorite had failed a
doping test.
Four months later — and more
than two months after Justify, Baf-
fert and the horse’s owners cele-
brated their Triple Crown victory
in New York — the board disposed
of the inquiry altogether during a
closed-door executive session. It
decided, with little evidence, that
the positive test could have been a
result of Justify’s eating contami-
nated food. The board voted unan-
imously to dismiss the case. In Oc-
tober, it changed the penalty for a
scopolamine violation to the
lesser penalty of a fine and possi-
ble suspension.
Baffert did not respond to multi-
ple attempts to contact him for
this article.
Rick Baedeker, the executive di-
rector of the California Horse Rac-
ing Board, acknowledged that it
was a delicate case because of its
timing. He said regulators moved
cautiously because scopolamine
could be found in jimson weed,
which can grow wildly where
dung is present and become inad-
vertently mixed in feed, and that
“environmental contamination” is
often used as a defense.
“We could end up in Superior
Court one day,” he said.
“There was no way that we
could have come up with an inves-
tigative report prior to the Ken-
tucky Derby,” he added. “That’s
impossible. Well, that’s not impos-
sible, that would have been care-
less and reckless for us to tell an
investigator what usually takes
you two months, you have to get
done in five days, eight days. We
weren’t going to do that.”
The documents reviewed by
The Times do not show any evi-
dence of pressure or tampering by
Justify’s owners. Horse racing,
however, is uniquely insular.
The chairman of the California
Horse Racing Board, Chuck Win-
ner, owns an interest in horses
trained by Baffert. Two other
board members employ trainers
and jockeys they regulate.
Justify’s owners included
power brokers in the sport such as
Kentucky-based WinStar Farm,
owned by Kenny Troutt, a billion-
aire commercial thoroughbred
breeder; the mysterious China
Horse Club, whose 200 members
from mainland China and beyond
have paid $1 million to join; and an
equine investment fund with ties
to the billionaire investor George
Soros. Baffert is America’s pre-
eminent trainer. He has won the
Kentucky Derby five times. In
2015, he trained American
Pharoah, the first horse to win the
Triple Crown after Affirmed won
in 1978.
With Justify, Baffert was faced
with a late-developing colt who
did not race as a 2-year-old. The
last horse to win the Derby with-
out starting as a 2-year-old was
Apollo in 1882.
As is customary, blood and
urine samples from Justify and 34
other horses who competed on the
day of the Santa Anita Derby were
delivered on April 10 to a lab at the
University of California, Davis.
The lab sent notice on April 18,
two and a half weeks before the
Kentucky Derby, that Justify had
tested positive for scopolamine,
which is normally used to treat
stomach or intestinal problems,
like nausea and muscle spasms, in
humans.
Horse racing has a long history
of trainers’ repurposing drugs in
pursuit of a performance edge.
Frog and cobra venom, Viagra, co-
caine, heart medicines and ster-
oids have all been detected in drug
tests.
Scopolamine cases have re-
sulted in disqualifications, purse
reimbursements, fines and sus-
pensions over the decades.
Dr. Rick Sams, who ran the drug
lab for the Kentucky Horse Racing
Commission from 2011 to 2018,
said scopolamine can act as a
bronchodilator to clear a horse’s
airway and optimize a horse’s
heart rate, making the horse more
efficient. He said the amount of
scopolamine found in Justify —
300 nanograms per milliliter —
was excessive, and suggested the
drug was intended to enhance
performance.
“I think it has to come from in-
tentional intervention,” he said.
Baffert and other trainers in
California were well aware that
scopolamine was a banned sub-
stance and that it could occasion-
ally be found in jimson weed,
though the plant’s strong odor andfoul taste make it unappealing. In
November 2016, Dr. Rick Arthur,
the racing board’s equine medical
director, warned horsemen to be
alert to jimson weed in their feed
and hay, saying that a positive test
for the drug is “totally avoidable.”
“Now, the likelihood under our
current procedures of getting a
positive from environmental con-
tamination is rather low,” Dr. Ar-
thur said at the time.
On April 20, two days after
learning of Justify’s positive test,
Dr. Arthur wrote in an email circu-
lated to Baedeker, the board’s ex-
ecutive director, its lawyers and
its interim chief investigator that
the case would be “handled differ-
ently than usual.” He asked for
further testing and review of the
data.
In an interview, Baedeker,
speaking on behalf of Dr. Arthur,
said he believed Dr. Arthur meant
that the investigation had to be
thorough.
Other doping cases have moved
swiftly through California’s racing
bureaucracy. In March, an em-
ployee of a trainer, William Morey,
was caught on surveillance giving
a prohibited drug to a horse. Lab
tests were conducted, an investi-
gation completed and a complaint
filed and made public 28 days lat-
er.
On the morning of April 26, four
days before Justify was to ship to
Louisville for the Kentucky Derby,
Baffert received notification that
Justify had tested positive for sco-
polamine. Baffert, as was his
right, asked that another sample
from that test be sent to an ap-
proved independent lab.
It was sent on May 1, four days
before the Derby, and that lab con-
firmed the result on May 8. (By
then, Justify had won the Derby.)
The same day, Baedeker notified
the board members that Justify
had tested positive for scopol-
amine.
“The C.H.R.B. investigations
unit will issue a complaint and a
hearing will be scheduled,” he told
them in a memorandum obtained
by The Times.
No one ever filed a complaint
and the hearing never took place.
Instead, on Aug. 23, 2018, more
than four months after the failed
test, Baedeker said he presented
the Justify case directly to the
commissioners of the California
Horse Racing Board in a private
executive session, a step he had
never taken in his five-and-a-half-
year tenure. The board voted
unanimously not to proceed with
the case against Baffert.
Without a formal complaint,
Baedeker said state law prohibit-
ed him from discussing in detail
the evidence of environmental
contamination. In a written re-
sponse, Baedeker said that a
handful of other horses may have
been contaminated, but he offered
little supporting evidence.
“The other horses had the pres-
ence of scopolamine but below the
screening level and therefore
were not positive tests,” he said in
a written response.
The California racing board,
along with the horse racing indus-
try at large, has been under
heightened scrutiny because ofthe death of 30 racehorses since
Dec. 26 at Santa Anita Park. The
Los Angeles district attorney is in-
vestigating the deaths, and the
state legislature has held hearings
and considered changes to im-
prove how horses are treated and
tracks regulated.
California statutes do not pro-hibit active horse owners from be-
ing appointed to the regulatory
board overseeing the sport. Be-
yond the chairman’s owner-
trainer relationship with Baffert,
the board’s vice chairwoman,
Madeline Auerbach, and another
commissioner, Dennis Alfieri, em-
ploy trainers and jockeys in Cali-fornia.
Joe Gorajec, a former chairman
of the Association of Racing Com-
missioners International, a trade
group of industry commissioners,
said the system was doomed to
fail in California and other states
in which the regulators are in
business with the people they are
there to police.
“Minimal prohibitions should
preclude active horse owners,
trainers, breeders and jockeys, or
anyone else that derives income
from the business, to serve on a
commission,” said Gorajec, who
was executive director of the Indi-
ana Horse Racing Commission.
“Commissioners should be prohi-
bited from wagering in the state
they serve.”
In the months that followed the
decision to drop the case against
Justify, the racing board moved to
lessen the penalty for a scopol-
amine violation from disqualifica-
tion and forfeiture of purse to only
a fine and suspension.
Baedeker said regulators had
been considering a move to the
lesser standard. He said the plan
was to appeal for the lesser classi-
fication if the matter came before
a hearing.
“Our staff failed to bring those
changes to the board — we admit
that,” he said.
Baffert has endured previous
regulatory proceedings in Califor-
nia
In 2013, after seven horses in his
care died over a 16-month period,
he was the subject of a report by
the board, which revealed he had
been giving every horse in his
barn a thyroid hormone without
checking to see if any of them had
thyroid problems.
Baffert told the investigators
that he thought the medication
would help “build up” his horses
even though the drug is generally
associated with weight loss. In
that case, the board’s report found
no evidence “that C.H.R.B. rules
or regulations have been vio-
lated.”
In retirement, Justify mates as
often as three times a day. Cool-
more, the international breeding
concern that bought Justify’s
breeding rights, receives as much
as $150,000 for a mating, or
$450,000 a day over a five-month
breeding season. That means
Coolmore has already recouped
its $60 million investment.
Justify is currently in Australia.
Owners there have their mares
lined up in the hope of getting
what is supposed to be the perfect
seed from the perfect racehorse.Triple Crown Winner Failed Drug Test Weeks Before Kentucky Derby
MORRY GASH/ASSOCIATED PRESSJustify’s violation was flagged in April after the Santa Anita
Derby. Trainer Bob Baffert, right, conferring with Mike Smith.
Revelations about a failed drug test in the spring of 2018 may cast a pall on Justify’s celebrated Triple Crown run: from a muddy
romp down the stretch at the Kentucky Derby to a bath before the Preakness and ultimately the winner’s circle at the Belmont.
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