The reason for the ‘Ha!’ is that everyone knows doping is as commonplace in horse racing as it is in professional cycling. In fact, I commented on this open and notorious secret just last year in “Big Doping Syndicate Behind Horse Racing Finally Exposed … and Indicted!” March 12, 2020.
In fact, to put this latest scandal into proper context, I can do no better than to reprise that commentary in its entirety:
*********
I have been championing calls to ban horse racing for over a decade for all manner of reasons. Here, for example, is what I wrote in “Sadly, the Bell Tolled for Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby,” May 6, 2008:
__________
The sport of kings? Indeed. But so is the barbarism of fox hunting. …
[J]ust like Barbaro, Eight Belles pulled up lame, after breaking both front ankles, at the Kentucky Derby. However, unlike Barbaro, she was put out of her misery right on the spot!
Why? The reason, I submit, is that she did not have the potential to generate much income for her owners off the track. Therefore, they had no vested interest in trying to save her. …
[I]t’s one thing to race horses in their natural state. It’s quite another, however, to inject them with so many pharmaceuticals to make them bigger, stronger and faster that their skinny legs cannot support their unnatural body mass [especially when all half-ton of it is pounding the ground at 40 miles an hour, one foot at a time].
_________
This is why I was so heartened late last year when no less an authority than Arthur Hancock III chimed in. After all, his Stone Farm stables in Kentucky has fielded 14 international champions.
[Hancock] believes American horses are entirely over-medicated, and many drugs mask underlying issues, putting perhaps slightly injured horses on the path to a fatal injury.
‘I contend that if a horse needs drugs to run he doesn’t need to be running. He needs to run on his natural ability … not some chemically induced ability,’ Hancock said.
(CBS This Morning Saturday, November 30, 2019)
I duly cheered in “Horse Racing Is to America What Fox Hunting Is to England. So Ban It!” December 2, 2019. But just imagine my schadenfreude upon reading this:
More than two dozen racehorse trainers, veterinarians and drug distributors were charged in a wide-ranging scheme to secretly dope horses and cheat the betting public, according to federal indictments unsealed on Monday in Manhattan.
Among the 27 people charged was Jason Servis, the trainer of Maximum Security, one of the best racehorses in the world and one who benefited from a doping regimen, according to one of the indictments.
(The New York Times, March 9, 2020)
Interestingly enough, Maximum Security won last year’s famed Kentucky Derby only to be disqualified – not for the real crime of doping but for some spurious claim of interference. What a farce!
Mind you, when you think about it, ever since they discovered how to, men have been doping themselves to enhance performance. Therefore, is it any wonder that they’ve been doping their horses tenfold to do the same…?
Moreover, chances are that, at some point in your life, you have directed scorn at inner-city kids for pushing drugs onto wholly complicit, suburban kids. Well, I hope you make a point of directing similar scorn at these suburban dads who have been injecting drugs into these wholly innocent, domesticated horses.
Frankly, it’s arguable that drug kingpins like Servis – who lorded over the world of horse racing – should be even greater social pariahs than those like El Chapo – who lorded over the world of cocaine trafficking.
That said, with all due respect to Servis, not only is horse racing’s biggest fish getting away; he’s being rewarded. His name is Bob Baffert, the man who trained both the 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharaoh and the 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify. Bear that in mind as you read this:
Maximum Security has a new trainer. The horse’s owner Gary West removed Jason Servis after he was indicted and charged on Monday in connection with a widespread international scheme to administer performance-enhancing drugs to the animals in order to make them run faster and boost their endurance. Maximum Security’s new trainer is Bob Baffert.
(CBS Sports, March 10, 2020)
At the risk of offending many of you, this conjures up my lingering suspicion about Usain Bolt reigning over the open and notorious doping era of track and field without getting caught.
Things that make you go, hmmmm, no?
**********
That reprised, I maintain that no fan of this dirty, barbaric sport, and certainly nobody involved in it, should have been surprised when this news broke yesterday:
Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert said Sunday that his barn has been told Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit failed a postrace drug test, the latest doping scandal for horse racing and arguably the sport’s premier trainer.
Flanked by his attorney Craig Robertson in a morning news conference at Churchill Downs on Sunday, Baffert said Medina Spirit was found to have 21 picograms of the steroid betamethasone, double the legal threshold in Kentucky racing, in a postrace sample.
That is the same drug that was found in the system of Gamine, another Baffert-trained horse who finished third in the Kentucky Oaks last September.
‘This shouldn’t have happened,’ Baffert said. ‘There’s a problem somewhere. It didn’t come from us.’
(NBC Sports, May 9, 2021)
Of course, Baffert would have you believe that Medina Spirit suddenly upstaged Mister Ed by anthropomorphizing into a dope fiend who was sneaking off in the middle of the night to toke on betamethasone-laced hay. I mean, even that old dog-ate-my-homework excuse is more credible than his,
I’m told the Derby winner failed a drug test.
But the reason I said Baffert is the big fish that keeps getting away is that, as yesterday’s NBC Sports report indicated, he has been caught doping his horses time and again. Most notably, this includes power brokers in the sport covering up a failed drug test that should have disqualified Baffert’s horse Justify from even competing in the 2018 Kentucky Derby.
We know now that a doped-up Justify went on to win the coveted Triple Crown that year. I duly expressed my cynicism in “Justify Wins Kentucky Derby. But Horse Racing Is Still Unjustified,” May 7, 2018. Yet here they go again.
By contrast, despite the best efforts of French newspaper L’Équipe, Lance Armstrong was never exposed for doping on his way to a 7 record-setting victories in the Tour de France. It took sensational media reporting after he retired to consummate his fall from grace. This resulted, among other things, in him being stripped of every one of his victories in the Tour.
And so the barons of horse racing face an unprecedented and untenable prospect. Because Baffert has never been caught in such sensational fashion, on such a big stage, before … in real time.
At the very least they will have to disqualify him for cheating in this race. But I submit that, to emerge from this scandal with even a shred of credibility, they must strip him of every one of his 7 record-setting victories in the Kentucky Derby, and bar him from competing in any other Triple-Crown race.
And yes, the scandalous symmetry between Baffert and Armstrong is uncanny.
Related commentaries:
the bell tolled…
horse racing to fox hunting…
Triple Crown…
Usain Bolt…
****
Doping syndicate…
Justify…