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Baffert denies administering Kentucky Derby winner with betamethasone
Prolific American trainer Bob Baffert is staring down the barrel of another drugs scandal as last weekend’s Kentucky Derby (Gr 1, 10f) winner Medina Spirit (Protonico) became the latest star trained by the handler to test positive for a banned raceday substance.
In a press conference hosted outside his barn at Churchill Downs on Sunday, Baffert revealed Medina Spirit had returned a post-race sample containing 21 picograms of the anti-inflammatory drug betamethasone, above Kentucky racing's threshold of ten picograms per mililitre.
Baffert has protested his innocence claiming the horse had never been treated with the medication.
Medina Spirit will not be disqualified while results of the split sample are analysed, but Baffert protested his innocence claiming the horse had never been treated with the medication.
“All I can tell you is that betamethasone, even though it’s an allowed drug, a therapeutic medication, we did not give it, my veterinarian or anyone here,” said Baffert.
“Medina Spirit has never been treated with betamethasone, (and) I cannot believe that I’m here before you guys. I never thought I’d be here. Yesterday (Saturday) I got the biggest gut punch I’ve had in racing, for something that I didn’t do, and it’s really disturbing – it’s an injustice to the horse.
“I don’t know what’s going on in racing right now, but something’s not right. I don’t feel embarrassed, I feel like I was robbed.
“We are going to do our own investigation – we are going to be transparent with the racing commission, like we have always been. We are going to show them everything – and one thing about California, everything is documented every day, what the horses get.
“This horse was never treated with that, and he’s a great horse, he doesn’t deserve this – he ran a gallant race and to me. I just feel like this last 18 months, what I’ve gone through, it’s like all of us right here, just imagine going to work every day and they test you every day for these levels, these contamination levels and they told you if you tested positive you were going to be fired. That’s the way I feel.
“I do not feel safe to train – it’s getting worse and to me going forward how do I enjoy the training? How do I move forward from this, knowing that something like this can happen and it’s just a complete injustice?
“But I’m going to fight it tooth and nail, because I owe it to the horse; I owe it to the owner and I owe it to our industry.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I know everybody is not out to get me, but there is definitely something wrong. Why is it happening to me?”
Baffert added: “We know we didn’t do it, and that’s the thing. We didn’t have anything to do with it. I don’t know how it got in his system, if it’s in his system or was there a mistake – we are going to get to the bottom of it.”