Horse Racing’s Tough Year Keeps Getting Tougher
A spate of horse deaths. Performance-enhancing drugs. An upended Kentucky Derby. And now questions about Triple Crown winner Justify.
NY TIMES
Horse owners, trainers and racetrack executives are supposed to take care of their athletes, equine and human. When they do not, both are at risk. As we saw earlier this year, 30 horses had to be euthanized after sustaining devastating injuries at Santa Anita Park in Southern California. Their riders, fortunately, were not seriously injured.
And regulatory agencies are supposed to protect the public, in the case of horse racing by “ensuring the integrity, viability and safety” of the industry, according to the California Horse Racing Board’s mission statement.
It is a hard job that requires a certain steadfastness in the face of public pressure. Sometimes that will is there, sometimes not.
On the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs, three Kentucky racing officials faced a test of their charge.
With tens of millions of dollars in the balance and a national television audience on the edge of its seat for close to 22 minutes, they did the unthinkable. They disqualified Maximum Security, a colt that appeared to all the world to be the easy winner of the 145th running of the Kentucky Derby.
Maximum Security, however, had jumped a puddle on the rain-soaked track turning for home and almost knocked over a rival, while slowing the momentum of a couple of others. The disqualification deprived the owner, trainer and jockey of their first Derby victory.
But it was a clear foul and the officials followed the rules. They made the second-place horse, a long shot named Country House, the winner, albeit with an asterisk next to his name.
In April 2018, the trainer Bob Baffert faced a crucial situation with a horse named Justify: The colt had to finish first or second in the Santa Anita Derby to qualify for the Kentucky Derby a month later.
Justify prevailed, then failed a drug test for the banned substance scopolamine. The rule on the books at the time required that Justify be disqualified, forfeiting both the prize money and entry into the Derby, the first Triple Crown race.
With nobody looking, California racing officials spent four months investigating the failed test, long enough for Justify to not only compete in the Derby, but also win it, along with the Preakness and Belmont Stakes. In August, after Justify’s breeding rights had been sold for $60 million, the California board — whose chairman at the time, Chuck Winner, had employed Baffert as his trainer — disposed of the inquiry altogether behind closed doors. It happened in an executive session, an approach the board’s executive director had not followed once before during his five-and-a-half-year term.
California officials did not follow their own rules, which should disappoint and dismay anyone who loves the sport of horse racing and values fair play. Justify is the 13th Triple Crown champion. Whether there is an asterisk next to his name is something horse racing fans will have to decide.