The Greatest of All Time - Bob Baffert

[taxicab]

Originally Posted by mountainman

Yes. But my post addressed this violation only. Not his history or resultant ramifications of any sort.

I'm not sufficiently versed on his other offenses to add much to that discussion.

Fair enough...

[PhantomOnTour]

Medina Spirit will not run in the Preakness.
The backlash from fans and non fans will be so great in the coming days...This colt will suddenly come up with a mysterious cough or a hot ankle on Fri or Sat and scratch.

[Nitro]

Originally Posted by Spalding No!

The concentration of a drug in the blood stream on its own cannot tell you the route of administration (how), the dose (how much), or the timing of treatment (when).

Based on the rules in Kentucky, however, "it shall be a violation for therapeutic medications to be present in excess of established threshold concentrations..."

With regard to your comment, I believe you might have missed this excellent summary:

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

Not sure if this has already been posted, but this is well worth the read.

https://inthemoneypodcast.com/some-t...betamethasone/

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by PhantomOnTour

Medina Spirit will not run in the Preakness.
The backlash from fans and non fans will be so great in the coming days...This colt will suddenly come up with a mysterious cough or a hot ankle on Fri or Sat and scratch.

I can't imagine they would scratch, given that all the drug testing protocols they agreed to would make such a move read as if they couldn't get the dope out of the system.

They have to run, and they are going to get booed. Hard.

[Parkview_Pirate]

Originally Posted by PhantomOnTour

Medina Spirit will not run in the Preakness.
The backlash from fans and non fans will be so great in the coming days...This colt will suddenly come up with a mysterious cough or a hot ankle on Fri or Sat and scratch.

Bold prediction. Maybe. But I'd predict Baffert has to play the hand through, and continue with his bluff and hope for the best. Medina Spirit runs 3rd on Sat.

[Parkview_Pirate]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

There's going to be very big pushes, behind the scenes, to sweep this under the rug just like Justify, or to make the punishment so minor that Baffert is back to his old ways soon. And the eight week "split" test delay seems tailor made for that strategy.

Nobody has gotten what they deserved yet.

For the most part, I agree with the spirit of your posts in this thread. But I will take the other side of the bet when it comes to the effort to sweep it under the rug. This was the first Lasix-free Derby, and there's simply too much irony and ammo now available for the anti-race day medication folks (myself included) and for the anti-racing folks like PETA. This may very well be a turning point for racing, and for which some of us may be happy about down the road.

Baffert is going to find himself getting the cold shoulder from many in the sport, as the guy who dropped the cow patty in the racing punch bowl.

[paulbenny]

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Betamethasone




I find it mind boggling that people do not read details, and with that as a backdrop, they do not test all horses only the top 5 in the Derby.



People need to do research on their own. What is a "blocker". I think that is a very sketchy non-detailed speculative comment.

[castaway01]

Originally Posted by paulbenny

I think that laying out the logic here:


name a trainer who does not use medication at all



Answer Zero


name a trainer who has been training a long time and won at least 40 or 50 million in purses who has no dead animals


Answer I do not know


etc.


I think he should be disqualified. I think that each case is individual. If you drag all past transgressions in, then who is left or creditable?

There are hundreds of trainers who didn't have seven horses drop dead, or 26 medication violations. Baffert has had far more violations than most trainers. You made it sound like he was pure as the driven snow, then you asked for people who use no medications. I don't know how to refute strawman arguments that make no sense.

Here's the thing---there are rules. He broke them. If we don't want any medication rules and everything should be legal, then make it all legal. If we want nothing legal, make nothing legal. But those are separate and unrelated arguments.

[paulbenny]

I think he should be disqualified. I agree with that. I think that he is what we focus on right now. Lukas had his problems a long time ago, I think but maybe I am wrong. So armed with a focused knowledge on Baffert, it is easy to hammer the guy. I was a person who claimed that Navarro would be in trouble literally a week before it happened. That is not to say I am some sharp guy.


I am indifferent to Bob Baffert, really. I had money on Mand. The point is, he is the focus, not Doug O'Neill, not Karl Broberg, etc. So my point on the rules are he did break them. Fine, but really it is very plausible that it was not intentional, like Navarro or Servis based upon the indictments of those two. If in fact, BB is that bad, lets see Walden and the Justify guys bail on him. Then if they do not people will say it is all an insider party and they all want to let it go or whatever.



We cannot have a police state of the police state here. It does get ridiculous. Again, Frank Whitley should not have run Ruffian because she was two fast and the toll on a horse is just too much, there heart is stronger than their legs argument.


I am not defending the guy I am saying he should not be given the victory. Lou Caval. should have been hung for Dancer's Image, right. I mean that was much different I believe.



People seem to dislike Baffert here.

[GMB@BP]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

I can't imagine they would scratch, given that all the drug testing protocols they agreed to would make such a move read as if they couldn't get the dope out of the system.

They have to run, and they are going to get booed. Hard.

how do you think the horse will react to those boos?

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by paulbenny

We cannot have a police state of the police state here. It does get ridiculous. Again, Frank Whitley should not have run Ruffian because she was two fast and the toll on a horse is just too much, there heart is stronger than their legs argument.

This smears the late Frank Whitely, a great trainer who cared immensely for his wonderful filly.

It was perfectly plausible to run her in that match race. She had been beating up on New York and New Jersey fillies, and she was, as far as I know, ready to run.

People read too much into that injury because it happened on national TV. But it was just a random event.

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by GMB@BP

how do you think the horse will react to those boos?

The horse doesn't care.

I'm wondering how the horse will react to not getting his "medication"!

[Spalding No!]

Originally Posted by Nitro

With regard to your comment, I believe you might have missed this excellent summary:

I posted something similar earlier on this thread before that article was posted.

http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...&postcount=114

But simply having the post-race sample concentration doesn't tell us anything about how it wound up in the horse.

The author of the article you linked is only speculating that the horse was administered 9mg of betamethasone directly into a joint.

There are too many unknown variables to say definitively without more information. Many are presuming that the horse injected with a single large dose a certain number of days before the race. Others are saying that the horse received several smaller doses applied topically for several days leading up to the race. Both are possible (as are a variety of other regimens).

[Spalding No!]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

The horse doesn't care.

I'm wondering how the horse will react to not getting his "medication"!

Medication rules are different in Maryland. If they were really brazen they could have treated him again the same day that they were notified of the positive Derby test.

Doubt it happened, but it adds another layer of complexity to this situation.

[lex]

Originally Posted by mostpost

The problem here is that so many here think every one is a cheater, especially anyone who is successful. My opinion is that if you are so anxious to accuse others of cheating it’s because you cheat in your life and can’t conceive of others succeeding without cheating.

Sometimes a mistake is simply that, a mistake.

Why does he have all of these mistakes while others have no trouble following the rules? He's spent two days complaining about the thresholds like everyone and their brother is getting accused when he seems to be the one who can't figure this stuff out.