Marking so much time with Baffert and Churchill Downs

It’s about time. But just how much time?

Some 1,167 days, seven hours and 29 minutes lurched between May 9, 2021, at 9:30 am EDT and July 19, 2024, at 4:59 pm

That would be 1,680,929 minutes from the time Bob Baffert held his signpost news conference outside barn 31 until the time we got word his suspension was finally over.

Count ’em, all 100,855,740 seconds between that drizzly Sunday at Churchill Downs, the racetrack, to Friday’s quintessential news dump from Churchill Downs, the corporation.

The next step in all this math would be picoseconds, but this story already was mired in picostuff.

That day when Baffert revealed that the apparent 2021 Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit had tested positive for betamethasone, he declared “I’m going to fight it tooth and nail.” He was a man of his word.

The Monday morning quarterbacking that happened Friday night on social media was predictable. That Baffert could have ended this sooner if he had been more content. That CDI was overdue to scrap its personal vendetta against Baffert. That this outcome was the inevitable end to needlessly protracted stubbornness.

Anyone knowing me is fully aware I lined up behind Baffert. The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, or whatever it is called now, compromised its no-tolerance language about not using a legal drug on race day when it also published murky guidelines about how long it would take for that medication to get out of a horse’s system . Churchill then made it clear it had no stomach for what Baffert said in that news conference and in subsequent TV interviews, all but turning his right to freely criticize them into a felonious act. Finally came the extension of the suspension not for medication violations, of which Baffert has had none since 2021. It was for nothing more than spite.

Now in the wake of all the cyber handshaking that came Friday with Baffert’s acceptance of responsibility and Churchill’s dusting off his old welcome mat, where are we now?

Mandaloun is still the recognized winner of the 2021 Kentucky Derby, although that futures ticket I had with his name on it remains worthless.

Then there is 2022. And ’23. And ’24. Who knows what might have happened had Baffert been allowed to run horses himself in the last three runnings of the Kentucky Derby? Rich Strike and Mage and Mystik Dan still might have written their wonderful stories. Or they might have been relegated to little more than big place prices.

Maybe a Louisiana Derby or two would have had a different winner. That’s right. Baffert’s suspension at Fair Grounds is over, too. Hey, how soon before there’s a Bob going this summer at Ellis Park or Presque Isle Downs? OK, just a moment I have to admit that is reaching.

One thing that came out of all this was the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority. It might have been the phoenix that rose from the flames of horse deaths at Santa Anita, but that fire was stoked by the reaction to Baffert and Medina Spirit and the 2021 Derby.

No, HISA did not exist when this whole odyssey began. A lot of other things were different in the spring of 2021.

Six hours after Baffert started his news conference, they raced the Sunday opener at Arlington Park. Three years later, the most beautiful racing facility ever built in America is gone.

Another hour after that, Golden Gate Fields was off and running. Three years later it is closed and rotting.

In May 2021, iconic turf writers Jay Privman and Marty McGee were working for Daily Racing Form. Now they are not.

That year Queen Elizabeth II made Britain’s comeback from COVID whole when she made her traditional appearance at Royal Ascot. Now the world’s most revered horsewoman is gone, and the duty to show up for five days in June falls to begrudging caretaker King Charles III.

Back in the spring of ’21, Biden was pushing 80, and Trump was pushing 75. They were just kids back then.

Tom Brady had just won a Super Bowl, Urban Meyer was a source of optimism in Jacksonville, the Pac-12 had more than two schools, NIL was nil, and no one even knew this kid from Dowling Catholic High in Des Moines, Iowa, named Caitlin Clark.

All that time, the face of racing was persona non grata at the home office of racing. Pity that.

It is convenient to use the prism of hindsight and say these three wasted years and all the riches spent on lawyers could have been put to better use if Baffert and Churchill boss Bill Carstanjen had been less pig-headed. I think that very phrase was one of the nine situations Sun Tzu cited in The Art of War. If only everyone had read it in the first place.

Here then is a toast to the first day of the rest of our lives. As Neil Armstrong put it 55 years ago this weekend, that’s one small step for man.

Now, when does Circa Sports put up a futures prop on Baffert winning Kentucky Derby 151?

Aside from this pop-up, Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.