The Greatest of All Time - Bob Baffert

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

IMO he's going to get DQ'd and be fined and suspended no matter what unless the split sample comes back negative.

We want to be able to tell whether the positive comes from the ointment or injection.

If it's the ointment, he's telling the truth. So he'll probably get DQ'd for the overage and face a smaller fine and suspension because the intent wasn't to cheat. It was to treat the horse's skin condition. It would only suggest he's running a very sloppy operation to allow this to happen.

If it's not the ointment, he's got a WAY BIGGER problem.

If they conclude it was injected they can get way more aggressive in the fine and suspension because that suggests he is lying about everything and was hoping it was out of the horse's system by race day.

That's why you want to know. The truth matters.

He should be suspended 2 years, either way.

His lawyer is looking to argue he shouldn't be suspended at all if it is the ointment. That's the danger here.

[PaceAdvantage]

Now I know why nobody posted this...kinda lame:

YouTube

But hey...this has to be the first time horse racing dominated any portion of SNL...right? LMAO

[pandy]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

IMO he's going to get DQ'd and be fined and suspended no matter what unless the split sample comes back negative.

We want to be able to tell whether the positive comes from the ointment or injection.

If it's the ointment, he's telling the truth. So he'll probably get DQ'd for the overage and face a smaller fine and suspension because the intent wasn't to cheat. It was to treat the horse's skin condition. It would only suggest he's running a very sloppy operation to allow this to happen.

If it's not the ointment, he's got a WAY BIGGER problem.

If they conclude it was injected they can get way more aggressive in the fine and suspension because that suggests he is lying about everything and was hoping it was out of the horse's system by race day.

That's why you want to know. The truth matters.

Logically, the ointment has to be a lie. Churchill Downs had their own vet overseeing anything that was given to each horse and he had to approve it. There's no way he would approve that ointment, he would know that it contained the drug, so it was another Baffert BS story.

I don't see how they can tell how it got into the horse's system. If the leave Medina Spirit up after the split sample comes back positive, horseracing is going to get another black eye.

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by PaceAdvantage

Now I know why nobody posted this...kinda lame:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoBob9hiM2s

But hey...this has to be the first time horse racing dominated any portion of SNL...right? LMAO

SNL is so bad right now. And it's too bad- a good Baffert sketch could have been funny.

[usfgeology]

The attorney may be buying time or intentionally slowing the process. Laboratory hold times and chain-of-custody issues can exceed quality control criteria and invalidate laboratory results, especially in a legal sense. However, I don’t know enough about equine hematology to know if this is a relevant concern in this situation.

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by usfgeology

The attorney may be buying time or intentionally slowing the process. Laboratory hold times and chain-of-custody issues can exceed quality control criteria and invalidate laboratory results, especially in a legal sense. However, I don’t know enough about equine hematology to know if this is a relevant concern in this situation.

If your client is guilty, delay is always your friend. And especially in a high publicity case- if KHRC were required to act on the positive test within a few days, with the media watching, they would have had no choice but to impose a long enough and restrictive enough suspension to avoid media and public ridicule. But if it doesn't happen until 4 months from now or something, the public will have moved on.

The CHRB, in burying the Justify thing, followed exactly this playbook.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by pandy

Logically, the ointment has to be a lie. Churchill Downs had their own vet overseeing anything that was given to each horse and he had to approve it. There's no way he would approve that ointment, he would know that it contained the drug, so it was another Baffert BS story.

I don't see how they can tell how it got into the horse's system. If the leave Medina Spirit up after the split sample comes back positive, horseracing is going to get another black eye.

I don't know enough about the oversight and record keeping to know what happened Derby week, but if you are correct, this other test should show it wasn't the ointment. Then he's screwed.

We may never know exactly what happened, but if you can eliminate the ointment he's in worse trouble unless he can come up with a better story that can be verified.

IMHO, the only way Medina Spirit stays up is if the split sample is negative. If that happens, we'll have another week of chaos discussing how that could happen or if someone is lying etc...

[classhandicapper]

Obviously I don't know if he's doing anything other than what's he's been caught doing, but I think it's pretty clear he's pushing the envelop as far as you can go with legal therapeutic drugs to gain any possible advantage.

Thyroxine is also a legal drug. According to articles at the time it was prescribed for him by a vet at his request and given to many (if not all of his horses). That's a thyroid medication, but it must have some kind of "off label" benefit or he and other trainers wouldn't have been using it.

I'm pretty sure the rules for off label use of thyroxin were changed. That kind of stuff has to be cleaned up along with designer and hard to detect performance enhancers.

[AskinHaskin]

Originally Posted by Track Phantom

Spot on. It seems some people are too obtuse to view these things within a logical, rationale framework. Bob Baffert, by his own admission in his 1999 book, has been giving horses illegal drugs since 1975. He also admitted to concocting a "story" for the CHRB.

Along the way, he's had numerous incidents with drugs and had healthy horses die in his care to an alarming degree.

When you put that backdrop into the context of how his horses win (shoot to the lead, get hooked and re-rally) and the number of "horses of a lifetime" he's had in just the last 5 years, it is hard for this to be more obvious.

One last thing, he is accomplishing these feats in an age when we know the PEDs are rampant in the game. So, to be a Baffert supporter, you'd have to ignore his history, ignore his lame defenses to drug violations, ignore his admittance to drugging and dishonesty about it, ignore the way his horses perform, and the style in which they do it, and most importantly, ignore that all of this has to happen over and above others cheating.

This is extraordinarily simple to an objective person. Unfortunately, what he is actually using is not detectable. The Servis/Navarro case told us that much. If this was detectable, Servis and Navarro would have been caught long ago and wouldn't have needed the FBI to intervene.

Baffert has singlehandedly fired the kill shot into the game of horse racing by tarnishing the one thing that had appeal, the Kentucky Derby. The Derby will never EVER have the same mythical quality about it. Game over.

The part that is just too difficult to overcome is that, if Baffert is cheating, he hasn't gotten any better over time.

A complete cheater would be improving over time, and more likely "...suddenly".


He's a guy who won with 15 of his first 48 Thoroughbred starters, and he has topped that win rate once, in four decades since.

And as to the FBI... they certainly would have noticed what is indisputably the most visible person in all of horse racing during the 21st century, yet they've not bothered to take much interest.


The many "horses of a lifetime" are a function of his success, and everybody wanting to spend big money on a horse and get him to train their (first/next) Kentucky Derby winner. It's one thing to pick and choose at auction, but quite another when you still get to pick and choose among all of the high-priced yearlings that others bought.


C'mon, which is it going to be... either Baffert "... (admitted to illegal drugs since 1975)..." or he's "dishonest" ? You have to pick one.


Now you talk about obtuse and irrational...



Hey, there's a guy who trains in the west named Mark Hanson. After about 12 years of training, his lifetime mark with Thoroughbreds is 58/131 (44%).

His lifetime mark with Quarter Horses is 241/686 (35%).

He's started three horses in mixed breed contests and he's 3/3.

Mark Hanson won with 21 of his first 42 career TB starters.


He makes Baffert look like a chump! (they do have in common the fact that they are not getting any better at either winning or cheating)


He must be cheating (or you're obtuse and irrational ?)


Why isn't the FBI involved already???

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by AskinHaskin

The part that is just too difficult to overcome is that, if Baffert is cheating, he hasn't gotten any better over time.

A complete cheater would be improving over time, and more likely "...suddenly".


He's a guy who won with 15 of his first 48 Thoroughbred starters, and he has topped that win rate once, in four decades since.

And as to the FBI... they certainly would have noticed what is indisputably the most visible person in all of horse racing during the 21st century, yet they've not bothered to take much interest.


The many "horses of a lifetime" are a function of his success, and everybody wanting to spend big money on a horse and get him to train their (first/next) Kentucky Derby winner. It's one thing to pick and choose at auction, but quite another when you still get to pick and choose among all of the high-priced yearlings that others bought.


C'mon, which is it going to be... either Baffert "... (admitted to illegal drugs since 1975)..." or he's "dishonest" ? You have to pick one.


Now you talk about obtuse and irrational...



Hey, there's a guy who trains in the west named Mark Hanson. After about 12 years of training, his lifetime mark with Thoroughbreds is 58/131 (44%).

His lifetime mark with Quarter Horses is 241/686 (35%).

He's started three horses in mixed breed contests and he's 3/3.

Mark Hanson won with 21 of his first 42 career TB starters.


He makes Baffert look like a chump! (they do have in common the fact that they are not getting any better at either winning or cheating)


He must be cheating (or you're obtuse and irrational ?)


Why isn't the FBI involved already???

LOLsamplesize

[46zilzal]

Originally Posted by cj

Just can't help yourself doubling down on dick posts lol. If the humans didn't matter, ... nevermind.

Deny that is so

[Robert Fischer]

There's sample sizes, there's lab tests and all that stuff, and those things are needed.

Lab tests may not do any good if the substance is undetectable, and the lab tests are known, and you've got smart dudes experimenting and formulating and testing their own experiments until they are undetectable, but you still need them.

And sample sizes and scientific method are obviously tremendously significant.


Less significant to try to guess along with 'common sense' ideas like someone has to show sudden, or incremental improvement to be have an edge from a substance, but I suppose it's a fun idea.


Another thing that can be useful, but won't be considered 'proof', is 'competence'. If someone is competent they can see something without authority or a test or a consensus. I don't think Arnold S. ever failed a bodybuilding drug test (and he's a guy who pretty much had success from the time he turned pro). I don't recall Barry Bonds ever failing a test (granted he took some time to start juicing and had a dramatic improvement). Lance Armstrong took a long time before he failed a test (at least I think he failed eventually, i didn't follow carefully), and Lance was considered a saint with the beloved Cancer battle. Guys like Karl Malone or LeBron James never failed a test to my knowledge. Too many examples to list more and dilute the point.

And you have data, and sample-sizes for all of these guys. And you have lab tests. And, you have a bunch of fans who insist these guys had enhancement edges, and you have a bunch of fans who insist these guys are simply genetic freaks who trained hard and had a modern diet and grew as they aged. And, then there are also some who have insight and competence and they can see whether or not these guys used an edge to enhance without needing a lab result, or a sample size, or the news to announce it.

It's the same way with horses.

[Robert Fischer]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

SNL is so bad right now. And it's too bad- a good Baffert sketch could have been funny.

Yea. I agree with you on this. It was Fun to see, and it's neat that a skit was done on Baffert and Horse Racing, but this could have been really hilarious, especially in the golden days of SNL

[pandy]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

Obviously I don't know if he's doing anything other than what's he's been caught doing, but I think it's pretty clear he's pushing the envelop as far as you can go with legal therapeutic drugs to gain any possible advantage.

Thyroxine is also a legal drug. According to articles at the time it was prescribed for him by a vet at his request and given to many (if not all of his horses). That's a thyroid medication, but it must have some kind of "off label" benefit or he and other trainers wouldn't have been using it.

I'm pretty sure the rules for off label use of thyroxin were changed. That kind of stuff has to be cleaned up along with designer and hard to detect performance enhancers.

Thyroxin increases a horse's metabolism and is now being considered dangerous, particularly since Baffert claimed that he gave it to the 7 horses that died in his barn. But it's also associated with Cobalt doping. Cobalt, when used as a PED, screws up a horse's thyroid, so from what I've heard, trainers who were doping with Cobalt were using Thyroxin with it. When Baffert's 7 horses died, Rick Arthur, the vet who was on the board of CHRB, wanted to test the horses for Cobalt, but this was some time after the original testing was done and the lab said that they couldn't test for it.

But I was told by someone prominent in the racing industry that a trainer was using Cobalt to dope his horses (as a PED) in New Jersey, and he was also using Thryoxin. He was permanently banned from the track.


https://www.paulickreport.com/news/r...ler-in-horses/

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by pandy

Thyroxin increases a horse's metabolism and is now being considered dangerous, particularly since Baffert claimed that he gave it to the 7 horses that died in his barn. But it's also associated with Cobalt doping. Cobalt, when used as a PED, screws up a horse's thyroid, so from what I've heard, trainers who were doping with Cobalt were using Thyroxin with it. When Baffert's 7 horses died, Rick Arthur, the vet who was on the board of CHRB, wanted to test the horses for Cobalt, but this was some time after the original testing was done and the lab said that they couldn't test for it.

But I was told by someone prominent in the racing industry that a trainer was using Cobalt to dope his horses (as a PED) in New Jersey, and he was also using Thryoxin. He was permanently banned from the track.


https://www.paulickreport.com/news/r...ler-in-horses/

Wow.

That changes my estimate of the odds.