By BRUCE LOWITT
Thoroughbred trainer Bob Baffert, winner of 16 Triple Crown races, failed Friday to force his way through the courts into Saturday’s 149th running of the Kentucky Derby after his horse, Trumpster, was ruled ineligible due to the presence in pre-race tests of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Baffert’s record-tying six Kentucky Derby victories, along with seven Preakness Stakes and three Belmont Stakes, have made him among the most recognizable faces in American thoroughbred racing. He sought to overturn a ban of Trumpster and his other horses by Churchill Downs through the middle of this year.
The penalty resulted following Baffert-trained Medina Spirit’s Derby victory in 2021. The win was rescinded following a failed drug test. Medina Spirit died in December 2021. Police in Santa Anita, California, said the colt was driving a Mustang 103 miles an hour in a 55 mph zone when it sideswiped a Bronco and slammed into a Pinto. Post-crash drug tests were inconclusive.
Baffert has experienced other controversies involving horses he has trained – Gamine, a filly, tested positive twice after races in 2020 – and has been cited for violations more than 25 times at thoroughbred tracks in a career that took some very intriguing and controversial turns early on.
Before turning his attention to horses, Baffert trained Seaward’s Blackbeard, winner of the 1984 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show; El-Dia Blue Danube, the Blue Mackeral Tabby Oriental Shorthair champion at the 1994 CFA International Cat Show; and Molotov, 1996 winner of the Great Expectations Stake at Mile High Greyhound Park.
Baffert denied accusations by competitors that he fed chemically enhanced Barkworthies and Meow Mix to the champions he trained then, “and there’s absolutely no reason now for my magnificent steeds to be barred from the Kentucky Derby or any other races named after states,” he said in his petition for reinstatement.
“The positive result of the tests on Trumpster occurred because of my misplaced generosity. I gave a part-time job as a groomer to a 76-year-old old fat guy from Florida who’s been out of work the past two years. Some members of my staff told me he said he knew everything about, well, everything,” Baffert insisted. “He told them he’d do the greatest job on Trumpster and help make him the fastest runner in the history of the Kentucky Derby, that he’d beat Secretariat’s time, and, I dunno, I guess they bought into his pitch and I trusted them.”
Baffert said the groom, identified in court papers as John Barron but also listed elsewhere as John Miller and David Dennison, had been taking ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to combat what the groom claimed was “indictment-induced” stress and that some of the medications might have been absorbed by Trumpster or maybe it inadvertently spilled into the horse’s feed.
When track officials said that was unlikely and the court ruled it their favor, Baffert angrily replied, “Hell, for all I know, Trumpster sat in some of it. Blame the horse’s ass!”
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