Report: Justify’s failed drug test evidenced as contamination

During NBC’s telecast of last Saturday’s Pennsylvania Derby (G1), Tim Layden, the longtime Sports Illustrated senior writer now working for the network detailed his findings following a New York Times report that Justify had failed a drug test before his 2018 Triple Crown run.

In an article published Wednesday for NBC Sports, Layden put pen to paper after interviewing eight equine medical experts — most on the record, and a couple off — and dropped some bombshell conclusions of his own.

Mainly: The New York Times’ “powerful insinuation – that (trainer Bob) Baffert intentionally drugged a horse who went on to win the Triple Crown with a performance-enhancing substance – buckles under rigorous scrutiny,” Layden wrote.

Layden corroborated both that Justify did fail a test as well as the Times’ reported amount of scopolamine in his blood, 300 ng/ml. But he also reported that seven horses conditioned by five trainers tested positive for the same banned substance, an amount considered a “cluster” as not all horses that race are tested afterward, only select runners to form a consistent sample.

In his Sept. 11 report, “Justify Failed a Drug Test Before Winning the Triple Crown,” Times writer Joe Drape had cited Dr. Rick Sams, head of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission’s drug lab from 2011 to 2018, as saying “scopolamine can act as a bronchodilator to clear a horse’s airway and optimize a horse’s heart rate, making the horse more efficient.”

But Layden’s panel of experts did not back up that assertion, and Sams didn’t respond to NBC’s request to comment.

“The Times seemed to have taken down Baffert, and by extension Justify, on the basis of one source’s evaluation,” Layden wrote.

The head of Citrus Feed, which continues to provide feed and bedding for Baffert’s horses and many others in the Santa Anita Park barn area, was the likely source of jimson weed believed to have been consumed by Justify before he won the 2018 Santa Anita Derby (G1), leading to a positive for scopolamine via environmental contamination. That victory qualified him for the Kentucky Derby, and the colt went on to sweep the Triple Crown while passing his drug tests after the Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes.

To entirely eliminate the naturally occurring jimson weed from his product, Larry Bell, owner of Citrus Feed, told Layden that “you would have to inspect every inch of the field, on foot.”

Additionally, Layden reported that samples taken from Justify and the rest of the California cluster included atropine. That substance would be present after consuming jimson weed, the report says, but not if scopolamine was provided via syringe.

Layden did not let off the hook the California Horse Racing Board’s handling of this issue, and he pointed out conflicts of interest between Baffert and its members, primarily the recently retired CHRB chairman Chuck Winner, for whom Baffert trains a horse.

Earlier this month, in a statement following the New York Times’ original report, Baffert said he “had no input to, or influence on, the decisions made by the California Horse Racing Board.”

Baffert added: “Justify is one of the finest horses I've had the privilege of training, and by any standard is one of the greatest of all time. I am proud to stand by his record and my own.”

Justify, who went 6-for-6 in his brief but brilliant career, retired following the Belmont Stakes. Coolmore now stands the chestnut son of Scat Daddy at stud.