By T. D. Thornton
The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission (KHRC) on Tuesday closed the 27-month regulatory saga involving Medina Spirit's GI Kentucky Derby drug disqualification by unanimously voting to deny appeals by trainer Bob Baffert and owner Zedan Racing Stables while accepting a hearing officer's recommended order that the penalties originally imposed by the Churchill Downs stewards be affirmed in their entirety.
But the legal battle to restore Medina Spirit's win in America's most historic and important horse race appears to be just now ramping up.
That's because now that the KHRC's decision is final at the state administrative level, it is ripe for being elevated to the court system and challenged by the losing parties.
Medina Spirit crossed the wire first in the 2021 Derby but subsequently tested positive for betamethasone in a KHRC post-race drug screening.
The Aug. 22, 2023, final order denying the appeals on behalf of Baffert and Medina Spirit's owner, Amr Zedan, officially elevates Mandaloun as the official winner of the 147th Derby.
Not only does the denial of the appeals uphold Medina Spirit's DQ, it lets stand the 90-day KHRC suspension that Baffert already served in 2022 but wanted expunged from his record. Also upheld was the $7,500 fine the KHRC imposed upon Baffert.
Baffert did not respond to TDN's request for comment prior to deadline for this story.
But the Hall-of-Fame trainer's attorney, W. Craig Robertson III, said he will soon be outlining next-step legal strategies with Baffert.
“It's disappointing that the KHRC engaged in no analysis whatsoever of the Hearing Officer's Findings of Fact or Conclusions of Law,” Robertson wrote in an email. “Neither did the KHRC's Order address any of the many objections we raised to the Hearing Officer's ruling.
“Instead, the KHRC did what it does best–rubber stamped its own foregone conclusion. I will discuss with Mr. Baffert, but believe it is highly likely the matter is appealed so that it can finally be presented to an impartial Court,” Robertson wrote.
Eight days after the 2021 Derby, Baffert first disclosed the betamethasone positive at a press conference outside the barn where Medina Spirit was stabled at Churchill Downs. In doing so, he was getting out in front of the official announcement that would come later by the KHRC.
In Kentucky, betamethasone is classified as a Class C drug (on an A-through-D scale with A being the most severe). It is prohibited in any amount in a post-race test.
At first, on May 9, 2021, Baffert chose to implicate various non-specific circumstances as the underlying culprit in the positive test. Two days later, on May 11, Baffert's legal team issued a press release stating that Medina Spirit was treated with the betamethasone-containing ointment Otomax as late as the day before his Derby win to help deal with a skin lesion.
Baffert and Zedan's lawyers would eventually build more than two years of court cases and administrative appeals around the contention that the betamethasone that showed up in Medina Spirit's post-race positive test was the type that came from a permissible topical ointment and not via some other restricted means, like an intra-articular injection.
The Twitter account for Zedan Racing posted a statement on Tuesday that underscored that this method-of-delivery argument would continue to be a central plank in any future court case.
“Today's decision by the KHRC finding the use of a commonly used topical ointment to be a medication rule violation relating to Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit was expected. We now look forward to a court's review and legal analysis of the express rules and basic constitutional principles involved. We genuinely believe that the wisdom and guidance that a court can provide will bring clarity benefitting all industry partners and particularly trainers and veterinarians.”
Although no KHRC ruling was issued in the first nine months after Medina Spirit's positive finding, the gaming corporation Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI), in June 2021 barred Baffert from competing at its portfolio of tracks for two years.
Medina Spirit died on Dec. 6, 2021, collapsing to the track after working five furlongs at Santa Anita Park. A necropsy conducted by the California Horse Racing Board stated that a “definitive cause of death was not established despite extensive testing.”
In 2022, Baffert initiated a federal lawsuit that challenged CDI's ban. The case dragged into 2023, when it was dismissed.
The KHRC finally held its hearing on Medina Spirit's positive test on Feb. 14, 2022, and issued the rulings against Baffert and Zedan a week later.
When stay requests pending appeals filed with the KHRC were denied, Baffert and Zedan took the matter to court, with the KHRC case unfolding around the same time as Baffert's unsuccessful lawsuit against CDI.
In the spring of 2022 Baffert failed to get an injunction against the KHRC that would have kept him from serving his suspension, so he stepped away from training between early April and early July of that year to sit out his penalty.
The KHRC appeals then led to six days of evidentiary hearings in August 2022. The process got delayed a month later when the hearing officer had to recuse himself after one of Baffert's attorneys bought a horse at auction that the hearing officer co-owned.
A new hearing officer, Eden Stephens, took over, and in May 2023 issued a report that concluded that “the stewards' decision was made on reliable, substantive evidence that the horse, Medina Spirit, was administered and carried the prohibited substance, betamethasone” and that “the KHRC's regulations do not state that any route of administration excuses a post-race betamethasone positive.”
It took nearly three more months before the KHRC's vote on the hearing officer's recommendations made it onto the Aug. 22, 2023, monthly meeting agenda. In the interim, CDI extended its private-property banishment of Baffert through 2024.
On Tuesday, the KHRC did not discuss any specifics of the appeals prior to the unanimous voice vote to reject them. The item was listed last on the meeting agenda, and it occurred after a break for the commission to have discussions in an executive session.
When the KHRC reconvened in open session, chairman Jonathan Rabinowitz asked if any commissioners wanted to “abstain due to conflicts of interest, or perceived conflicts of interest.” Four did: Michael Dudgeon, Lesley Howard, Charles O'Connor and Catherine Parke.
Rabinowitz then called for a vote “approving a final order as stated.” But exactly what the KHRC commissioners were voting on was not read into the public record.
TDN had to subsequently ask for and receive a copy of the order from KHRC staff after the meeting to learn what it stated.
“The Hearing Officer's Recommended Order is approved, adopted, and incorporated herein by reference as a part of this Order,” the five-page document read, in part. “Petitioners' appeal is therefore DISMISSED. This is a FINAL AND APPEALABLE ORDER…”
The document listed the procedures for just such an appeal, which, according to state statue, must happen in a Kentucky circuit court within 30 days after issuance of the final order.
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