The Bob Baffert story: Famed Triple Crown wins and a long history of failed drug tests - Courier Journal

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The year was 1976, and fledgling trainer Bob Baffert was desperate. 

"I couldn't win a race, and I wanted to win so badly before the meet ended," he wrote years later in his autobiography, "Dirt Road to the Derby."

So he let a virtual stranger give his horse a painkiller.

"I didn't know what it was, and I barely knew the guy," Baffert said in his book. 

The drug turned out to be morphine, and the horse lost anyway. California regulators suspended Baffert for a year. 

But he managed to flout the sanction: Each day, he would sneak into the backside at Los Alamitos Race Track in his father's horse trailer and prep his dad's horses in the privacy of his barn. 

Fast forward 15 years. 

Related: Bob Baffert was warned. Here's what D. Wayne Lukas told him about fighting his suspension

In 1991, Baffert was slapped with another suspension, this one for two weeks, for giving the medication Robinul to a $32,000 claimer to clear the horse's mucous. His lawyer advised the sanction wasn't worth fighting, that Baffert should just take a vacation to Hawaii, which he did. 

"I vowed right then and there I would never help one of these horses like that again," he wrote in the book, co-authored by turf writer Steve Haskin. "I told the investigators, 'Boys, that's the last shot you will ever get at me.'"

But the next year, he gave the very same drug and Lasix, a diuretic, to Thirty Slews, a bad bleeder who won the Breeders' Cup Sprint a few days later at Florida's Gulfstream Park.  

Baffert said he met an assistant named "Jake" at 4 a.m., when there would be no veterinarians around. While Baffert mixed the solution, Jake pretended to read the warning label on the bottle. 

"Side effects may cause two weeks in Hawaii," Jake said. 

"We just broke up laughing," Baffert recalled in his book. 

Baffert declined an interview — an unusual response for someone who once described himself as a "media whoremonger." But through his lawyer, he responded in writing to about 50 questions.

He said horse racing has been a "rich source of anecdotal and exaggerated storytelling, and this (morphine) anecdote from nearly 50 years ago when I was a college student reflects that."

He noted Robinul is legal if it's given within a certain time period before a race, "which it was," and Lasix is a permitted therapeutic used by "virtually every trainer."

"I love horses, and I love the sport," he said.

The 'Lance Armstrong of horse racing'

Thirty years later, dirty drug tests are no laughing matter for the 69-year-old Hall of Fame trainer. 

The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission disqualified his 2021 Derby winner, Medina Spirit, after it tested positive for betamethasone, a banned steroid. The agency suspended him for 90 days and Churchill Downs for two years.

It was the fifth positive test in Baffert's barn in 12 months and the 31st of his career, according to a tally by The Courier Journal.

Baffert called the tally a "fundamental misunderstanding of my regulatory history," noting he has had "one medication violation in Kentucky and none in New York."

But Baffert will miss his first Kentucky Derby since 2013 and only the fifth since his debut in 1996, when Grindstone nipped Baffert's Cavonnier at the wire. 

With his shock of white hair and dark sunglasses he wears on even the cloudiest days, Baffert has been the most recognizable figure in horse racing. 

But now, says Ray Paulick, editor and publisher of the industry's leading independent newsletter, the Paulick Report, he has come to symbolize what's wrong with the sport.  

Bill Carstanjen, chief executive of Churchill Downs Inc., has said Baffert's record of testing failures — and his "extraordinary" excuses for them — "threatens public confidence in thoroughbred racing and the reputation of the Kentucky Derby."

In a news release, Marty Irby, director of Animal Wellness Action, an anti-animal cruelty group based in Washington, D.C., called Baffert "the Lance Armstrong of horse racing." 

Baffert's supporters, including Barry Eisaman, who breaks 2-year-olds for Baffert and other trainers at a farm in Williston, Florida, said Baffert is a victim of increasingly accurate tests that can detect infinitesimal amounts of medication long after it is administered. 

Eisaman argued many of the drugs Baffert has been caught using are therapeutic rather than performance-enhancing. 

Horse owner Mike Pegram, a McDonald's franchisee for whom Baffert trained the 1998 Derby and Preakness Stakes winner Real Quiet, has said Baffert is a victim of his own success and swagger. 

"He's always wanted to be a rock star, and some people don't think racing should have one," Pegram told the Los Angeles Times last year.

Asked if other horsemen are jealous of him, Baffert said, "I wouldn't know."

No better horse buyer

Baffert's success is indisputable. Many call him the greatest trainer ever. 

He has won six Kentucky Derbies, seven Preaknesses and three Belmont Stakes. That doesn't count his seventh Derby winner, Medina Spirit, who was disqualified for failing a drug test.

He is only the second trainer to capture two Triple Crowns, with American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018. 

His horses have won an exceptional 23% of their 13,900 starts — 15% is considered good. And they have amassed lifetime earnings of $331 million, trailing only Todd Pletcher and Steve Asmussen, who each have far more races. 

Experts cite various secrets for Baffert's success. 

Pegram has said flatly "there is no better horse buyer in America." 

Baffert acquired Real Quiet, the 1997 Derby winner, for a bargain $17,000 and the 1998 Derby victor, Silver Charm for only $85,000, for owners Beverly and Bob Lewis, a California beer distributor.

Baffert attributes his success to a work ethic instilled by his parents and "an abiding love of horses."

After proving he could win with thoroughbreds bought on the cheap, Baffert's roster of clients now includes some of the world's richest men, including billionaire George Soros and a secret consortium known as the Chinese Horse Club, both of which are willing to pay millions of dollars for horses.

Practices in full pads

Paulick says Baffert horses win so much because he trains them harder and longer than other trainers. If they can't cut it, he has so many he can send the failures back to the farm. 

"He is like a football coach who has his team practice in full pads, full out," Paulick said. "When they go to race, they are ready to win."

Baffert says his key to winning is to "do what you can to keep the horse healthy and happy and also to instill confidence. … Each horse has a different personality. One size does not fit all."

But Paulick and Barry Irwin, the owner of Team Valor International, based in Versailles, Kentucky, contend there is another key ingredient in Baffert's formula: excessive medication. 

"He is good at making a horse run fast," Paulick told The Courier Journal.

Irwin says most of the rules Baffert has been penalized for violating have been minor, but they show he has become sloppy — and arrogant — as a result of racing officials allowing him to slip off the hook.

Irwin, a former turf writer whose horses run mostly in Europe, has said Baffert will do anything to win. 

"He is a brilliant trainer who has honed his craft, but he plays it too loosey-goosey," Irwin told The Courier Journal.

Baffert said that is "false and spews from a false narrative pushed by people who have little-to-zero knowledge about the sport" and "less … about me."

Baffert said Irwin has never visited "my barn nor spoken with me or any other person who works endless hours caring for our horses."

In November 2020, Baffert came close to apologizing. In a statement issued by his lawyer, he said: 

"2020 has been a difficult year for everyone. It has been no exception for my family, my barn and me. I am very aware of the several incidents this year concerning my horses and the impact it has had on my family, horse racing and me.  

"I want to have a positive influence on the sport of horse racing. Horses have been my life, and I owe everything to them and the tremendous sport in which I have been so fortunate to be involved."  

Baffert said his statement was not an admission of wrongdoing and came in response to "testing positive despite not rule having been broken."

But he's "a natural to promote the sport," Los Angeles Times turf writer John Cherwa wrote last year. "And promote he does, chatting with people he met one minute ago as if they were long-lost friends."

'If you ain't cheatin', you ain't competin''

He grew up one of seven siblings on a 250-acre ranch in Nogales, Arizona, across the border from Mexico that his father bought in 1953, the year Robert A. Baffert was born. 

Bill Baffert Sr., known as "The Chief," raised cattle and chickens. Young Bob said later in his autobiography that he learned about business selling eggs wholesale to groceries and restaurants. 

He became such a good salesman, the book says, he "could have sold a crate of eggs to someone on a cholesterol-free diet."

But The Chief also bought some inexpensive quarter horses, which are smaller than thoroughbreds and built for speed over shorter distances. He plowed a dirt track into his oat hayfield, and Bob started riding each morning before school. 

At 10, he started to race at Sonoita, a track 30 miles northeast of the ranch, and won his first race on "Sizzling Snark."

His mother, Ellie, didn't want him to be a jockey — she thought it was too dangerous. So Bob and The Chief made a deal. The Chief wouldn't tell Ellie that Bob was riding if Bob didn't tell her his father was quaffing beers.

Attending the University of Arizona's Race Track Industry Program, Baffert carved his place as a trainer in the rough-and-tumble world of quarter-horse racing. 

"They had rules, but I don't know how strictly they were enforced," Paulick said.

The sport had a cowboy mentality, he said, like early NASCAR, where drivers liked to say: "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't competin'." 

Baffert said that is an unfair characterization of quarter-horse racing.

Baffert's best friend, he said in his book, was John Bassett, a champion quarter-horse trainer who is now serving a 10-year suspension for giving two horses dermorphin, an opiate known as "frog juice" because it is derived in its natural form from South American tree frogs and said to be 40 times more powerful than morphine.

Baffert said Bassett never encouraged him to break a rule and if he had, "I would have refused to do so."

Baffert buys yearling instead of engagement ring

Baffert met his first wife, Sherry, in Tucson, Arizona, where she was working as a cocktail waitress. He saved up $11,000 to buy her an engagement ring, then spent the money instead to purchase a yearling at a sale in Ruidoso, New Mexico.  

"When I told her what I had done, she said, 'I just hope it is a good one,'" he recalled. 

In fact, in its first race, the horse bucked all the way around the track and finished dead last. 

He and Sherry had four children, and by Baffert's account, he was as tough on them as his horses. Sherry did not respond to a message seeking comment.

"With Taylor or any of my kids, if they have a bad game of basketball, I don't say: 'You did good. You'll get him next time,'" Baffert wrote in his autobiography. "I say, 'Taylor, you really sucked. You know why? You didn't have confidence in yourself, and you thought that kid was better than you. He wasn't better than you. You gave up too easily.'"

Taylor Baffert did not respond to a message seeking comment.

None of Baffert's children followed him into horse racing.

"They never really got the bug," he told the Sacramento Bee in 2019. "There are no lawyers or doctors in there; they're just getting through."

Baffert said he is proud of all his children and always encouraged them to follow their passions.

Sherry and Baffert eventually divorced; she said he was obsessed with racing and never took a day off. 

In 2002, he wed Jill Moss, a former "Miss Hickman Country" (Tennessee) and anchor for WLKY-TV, the CBS affiliate in Louisville.

They have one son, Bode, named after Baffert's friend Bode Miller, the Olympic gold medal-winning ski racer, and they live in a 5,000-square foot, $3.2 million home outside Los Angeles in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains.

Baffert leaves his cowboy hat behind

It was Pegram who persuaded Baffert to leave quarter horses — and his cowboy hat — for the richer world of thoroughbred racing. And Pegram became his first big patron. 

They met in 1986, and their relationship began inauspiciously when Baffert put down $20,000 of Pegram's money at Ruidoso Downs Race Track in New Mexico for a horse that was standing in deep wood shavings. 

Only later did Baffert see it had a bad foot. He offered to pay half the cost because he realized he had bought Pegram damaged goods. The owner declined and later, in Baffert's book, said "it showed me he was accountable."

But Baffert wasn't as candid when he claimed a horse for Pegram at Del Mar Racetrack that later refused to come out of the starting gate. It turned out Baffert was so nervous he'd filled out the claiming form wrong, making the claim invalid.

When Pegram asked if he had claimed the horse, Baffert prevaricated, he confided in his autobiography. 

"No, I changed my mind at the last minute — the horse was acting kind of weird," Baffert said he told Pegram. "I was too embarrassed to tell him what happened. So, I came out looking good. Mike was thinking, 'This boy is OK, he's paying attention.'"

Baffert would only say "Mike and I have a great friendship."

Baffert wasn't entirely honest when another long-time patron, owner Bob Lewis, got a $1.7 million offer for Silver Charm, and Baffert advised him to take it. But then Baffert changed his mind and had to figure out how to squelch the deal, he confided in his autobiography. 

So he told his exercise rider to trash the horse after a workout: "I am going to ask you how he did, and I want you to say he felt OK, but not like he did at Del Mar. … Just don't go overboard. I don't want it to sound too obvious that we are trying to talk them out of it."

The would-be buyer backed out — but Baffert said it was because of concerns about the horse's pedigree. Silver Charm went on to win the Derby in 1997, Baffert's first victory in a Triple Crown race. Lewis died in 2006. 

Baffert retired Silver Charm — and other horses — to Old Friends, a retirement home for old thoroughbreds in Georgetown, Kentucky. Founder Michael Blowen says Baffert visits twice as much as any trainer, including on Thursdays before the Derby.

"His love for his horses is palpable," Blowen said.    

Blowen said during one visit he saw Baffert showing Silver Charm to Bode, his youngest child.

"If not for him," Baffert said, according to Blowen, "I'd still be chasing horses around the desert." 

A Triple Crown drought

The next year, in 1998, Baffert won the Derby again, for Pegram with Real Quiet. 

Baffert won the Eclipse Award as the sport's outstanding trainer three years in a row in 1997-99. 

Both Silver Charm and Real Quiet won the first two legs of the Triple Crown but were denied in the Belmont Stakes. The same happened to War Emblem in 2002.

It seemed Baffert, while spectacularly successful, was snakebitten. 

Over the next 13 years, he won only a single Triple Crown race, in 2010, when Lookin at Lucky captured the Preakness.

But owners liked him even when their horses lost.

"I'll never forget what Bob Lewis told me after Silver Charm lost at Santa Anita," Paulick told The Courier Journal.

"Even when you lost with Baffert, you had fun," Paulick said Lewis told him. Lewis entrusted his horses to Baffert for eight years and grew so close to him he said, "I would have adopted him as a son."

Baffert was charming, he was funny and always had a quip, horsemen said.

Baffert's excuses: Cough syrup and poppy seed bagels

Baffert scored his ultimate victory in 2015, when American Pharoah, a bay colt with a faint star on his forehead, won the first Triple Crown since Affirmed 37 years earlier. 

Then in 2018, Baffert duplicated the feat with Justify.  

But as Baffert's triumphs mounted, so did his horses' positive drug tests — and his excuses for them. 

• In 2000, when Nautical Look tested positive for morphine, Baffert said it could have been a result of his stable hands eating poppy seed bagels and muffins around the horse. Baffert got a two-month suspension, which was reversed when a judge ruled he had been denied due process because a state testing facility destroyed the sample.
• In 2018, champion filly sprinter Gamine and a colt named Charlatan both tested positive for lidocaine, a numbing agent. Baffert said an assistant wearing a pain patch for a bad back had inadvertently contaminated the horses. Baffert was fined and suspended for 15 days by Arkansas regulators, but they voted later to reduce his fines to $5,000 per horse, restore the horses' placings and purse money, and overturn his suspension.
• In the same year, before Justify won the Derby on the way to the Triple Crown, he tested positive for the banned substance scopolamine, widely considered a performance enhancer. Baffert claimed Justify had eaten jimson weed, and California regulators cleared him, citing six other horses across four barns who also tested positive because of feed contamination.  
• In 2020, Merneith, a mare out of American Pharoah, tested positive for an excessive amount of Dextrophan, a cough suppressant, after finishing second in a race near San Diego. Baffert said a groom was sick with COVID-19 and taking cough syrup that contained Dextrophan and had urinated in the horse's stall. Baffert was fined $2,500.
• And when Medina Spirit tested positive for betamethasone after the 2021 Kentucky Derby, Baffert initially said "it didn't come from us." The next day he admitted the horse had been treated with a topical ointment that contained the substance. 

'How many times can the dog eat your homework?'

Baffert's shifting stories and excuses prompted turf writer John Cherwa to write last October, "How many times can the dog eat your homework?"

PETA vice president Kathy Guillermo told The Courier Journal horse racing is a "shell game" for Baffert. "A positive drug test comes back, and he tries to convince us that what we see is not there." 

Asked if he stands behind his explanations, Baffert said "I stand by the truth." He defended all of them.

Honoring Baffert's 90-day suspension in Kentucky, the New York State Gaming Commission banned Baffert for the same time period, meaning he is disqualified from this year's Belmont Stakes.

California also honored the Kentucky suspension under a reciprocity agreement, ordering Baffert to vacate his barn at Santa Anita Park and barring him from training any horses previously under his care. 

To appease owner-clients, Baffert also has had to transfer Derby hopefuls to other trainers, so they could continue to run and amass enough points to qualify for the world's most famous horse race.

Eisaman, who prepares dozens of 2-year-olds a year for Baffert and talks to him frequently, said his most recent troubles have been stressful for him and have overshadowed an immensely successful career. 

But Baffert is still winning.

In March, his Country Grammer won the $12 million Dubai World Cup, the world's richest horse race.

And Paulick warns against writing him off. "He is not going to ride off into the sunset" 

Asked if he is happy, Baffert said yes. "I have an incredible wife and five amazing children. I work with a world-class team. I feel blessed."

Irwin, the Versailles trainer and a vocal critic of both Baffert and race-day medications in racing, said he may have learned a lesson. 

"He thought he was bigger than the game," Lewis said. "He found out he is not." 

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.