Baffert hearing: Scientists spar Monday; trainer is on deck

Frankfort, Ky. 

The star witnesses will not appear until Tuesday. And not in the hearing room but, instead, via Zoom.

Before Bob Baffert returns to testify digitally, and before Medina Spirit’s owner Amr Zedan makes a cyber-appearance from Jordan, three scientific experts took center stage remotely Monday. They were called by Baffert’s lawyers in the Hall of Fame trainer’s appeal to reverse sanctions handed down by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission because of a failed drug test that followed the late Medina Spirit’s first-place finish in last year’s Kentucky Derby. 

At times the witnesses stood their ground – and by their conclusions – while discrediting those of their peers in seven hours of Q&A on the fifth day of the hearing.

Baffert is trying to erase a 90-day KHRC suspension from his record while getting Medina Spirit restored as the winner of the Derby. The KHRC wants to maintain the status quo, saying the betamethasone that showed up in a post-Derby drug test was a simple rule violation that merited punishment.

Dr. George Maylin, the head of the New York lab that conducted the third set of tests on Medina Spirit’s sample, vouched for Baffert’s claim that the betamethasone was a valerate form that came from an application of Otomax ointment to treat a skin condition.

“We found betamethasone-17 valerate,” said Maylin, adding that he complied with an order from Franklin County Circuit Court judge Thomas Wingate to test for three specific medication components including betamethasone valerate but not acetate or phosphate.

Maylin said he did a further study on the urine sample from Medina Spirit and concluded there was no sign of the betamethasone acetate, which would have been evidence of an illegal injection.

Valerate is the betamethasone that comes from the Otomax ointment that Baffert’s team contended was legal. That was as opposed to a dose of acetate, which would have come from an illegal injection. The KHRC case has all along been that it did not matter how Medina Spirit got the betamethasone, that it was illegal at any level in any form on Derby day.

During a cross-examination, KHRC lead attorney Jennifer Wolsing got Maylin to admit that he said in a deposition “it was folly to let Medina Spirit run” after being given betamethasone the day before the 2021 Derby.

“I was referring to the unforeseen consequences that have transpired,” said Maylin, later adding he was not looking for a particular result from the urinalysis. “I let the facts speak for themselves.”

Maylin also said that while he was confident under reasonable scientific standards that Medina Spirit had not been injected with betamethasone, he could not be 100 percent certain of it.

Because Medina Spirit’s sample had been damaged before it was transferred from Kentucky in June 2021 to be flown for testing in New York, Maylin said, “We did not have good enough urine.” Later he said, “Had there been more urine, had there been more time, more could have been done. The judge wanted an answer, if you will, in a hurry.”

Yet Wolsing reminded Maylin it still took him six months to reach his conclusion.

At one particularly contentious exchange between Wolsing and Maylin, the doctor said, “You don’t want an answer you don’t agree with.”

Tom Lomangino, who conducted equine testing as a second-generation chemist in New York, Maryland and Kentucky before he retired six years ago, criticized the first two tests done on Medina Spirit’s sample splits.

Of the examination done by Industrial Laboratories of Colorado, he said, “I read something that the analyst guessed. … At that point it’s a suspicion.”

Of the second test done by the University of California, Davis, Lomangino told Baffert attorney Clark Brewster, “If they found (betamethasone), they did not rerun it,” pointing out that a double-check of a positive was required under international standards.

“Essentially, it’s a cookbook,” he said. “You know what the intent is. You know how to proceed.” Without a paper trail, he said, “chaos starts.”

Because Lomangino had a medical appointment Monday afternoon, Wolsing had not finished cross-examining him. He was expected to resume testimony Tuesday morning.

Dr. Steven Barker, the former head of the laboratory that tests horse samples in Louisiana, at one point adding to the analogies meant to quantify the small overage of betamethasone found in Medina Spirit.

“A flea weighs 450 micrograms,” he said. “By the time you take one 450th of that, we’re down to the amount of betamethasone that was in the entire bloodstream of a 1,000-pound animal.”

Asked by Baffert attorney Craig Robertson if the amount of betamethasone found in Medina Spirit would have given the colt a boost in the Derby, Barker said, “It would not have affected any aspect of the horse’s performance.”

Barker went so far as to call out Thursday’s testimony of Dr. Scott Stanley, the head of the University of Kentucky laboratory. Stanley said he did not believe, as Maylin concluded, that Medina Spirit got betamethasone from a topical ointment.

“Dr. Stanley made a number of egregious errors in interpreting the data and results,” Barker said. “It makes me question his professionalism.”

On the same token, Barker praised Maylin’s test, saying he “was asked in a very short period of time to develop an analysis” to parse the type of betamethasone that turned up in Medina Spirit. “There was nothing routine about this. I think this was yeoman’s work … without a lot of funding, if any, over a short period of time.”

In cross-examination, Wolsing tried to establish that Barker’s conclusions were “a minority opinion” among his peers. Barker declared that Wolsing did not understand various points he made both Monday and in previous hearings.

Before testimony began Monday morning, Baffert’s lawyers asked for hearing officer Craig Patrick to make at least a partial directive verdict in their favor. As Joe DeAngelis argued, “We have an abundance of evidence that Otomax was used. … (KHRC lawyers) haven’t produced anything besides argument that there was an injection.”

Wolsing countered that “plain, old betamethasone is listed as a class C substance. It doesn’t matter scientifically how betamethasone gets into the system.”

Patrick, a local attorney who has an office in the state building where the hearing is taking place, turned down the Baffert team’s motion, allowing the testimony continue apace. As he put it, “I would like to end the food fight now, but I am going to deny your motion.”

With the hearing nearing a conclusion, perhaps on its sixth day Tuesday, Brewster said he expected to call Baffert, Zedan and Baffert’s veterinarian Dr. Vince Baker as his final witnesses.

After that come closing arguments. Then Patrick will take time to study the case and arrive at a non-binding ruling that the 14 members of the KHRC may accept, revise or reject.

Monday marked the first day of the hearing that Baffert and his wife Jill were not in attendance.

“I’m in California,” he said in a text message. “I’m on (Tuesday) morning.”