Hall of Fame trainers Bob Baffert and Todd Pletcher both appeared together on a panel at the Global Symposium on Racing five years ago, when the symposium organizers first launched a series featuring racing personalities in a quasi-intimate question-and-answer session. They were back in the same setting Tuesday morning, and, as the moderator, 1/ST Racing’s Amy Zimmerman, noted right off, wow, what a five years it has been. “I hope the next five years are a lot smoother than the last five years,” Baffert said. Sure, there was the pandemic, the closing of several high-profile racetracks, two bitterly contested elections, etc. But everyone in racing knew specifically what Baffert was referencing. Baffert was banned by Churchill Downs for three years in 2021 after his seventh Derby winner, Medina Spirit, tested positive for a regulated medication and was subsequently disqualified. A series of lawsuits, regulatory challenges, dicey television appearances, and a 90-day suspension made the last few years a challenge for Baffert, to say the least. On the Tuesday panel, Baffert did not directly reference the specifics of the positive and the legal challenges, but he did reflect on several topics adjacent to it, including how he spent his time during the 90-day suspension. “The first 45 days were probably the toughest, because when you are used to going to the barn every day or thinking about it, and then all of a sudden [you’re not] that’s when I realized, I’m never going to retire,” Baffert said. “But then after 45 days, I started to realize it’s kind of nice to wake up and find out you’re not getting any bad news.” :: Get the Inside Track with the FREE DRF Morning Line Email Newsletter. Subscribe now.  Zimmerman noted that Baffert had said in the past that trainers do not take vacations. But Baffert said he spent part of the 90-day suspension doing vacation-like things with his family in South Florida and Cabo San Lucas. “Then, it was getting to be the time to go back, and I was like, ‘Wow, I’m kind of liking this,’ ” he said. “It makes you think back and say, ‘Maybe it’s okay to take a vacation.’ ” Though Baffert shined in the telling of several anecdotes – such as a touching story about the naming of his current Derby prospect Barnes – much of the conversation was something of a rapid-fire round table, touching on a multitude of topics currently relevant to the racing industry. Both Baffert and Pletcher said they supported the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, but that the organization had made some mistakes that had alienated horsemen. “I think the potential end result of HISA is going to be good for the game,” said Pletcher, who was recently appointed to HISA’s horsemen’s advisory panel. “The way we were going, there were a lot of issues. It’s the closest thing we’ve had to a central governing body.” Pletcher recounted his own brush with the regulatory authorities when discussing the trials and tribulations of Forte, the Mike Repole-owned horse who was scratched on the morning of the 2023 Kentucky Derby with a foot issue. Then, just days later, it was reported that the horse tested positive for a prohibited painkiller after a win nine months earlier. “It was very frustrating, to say the least,” Pletcher said. But Pletcher also said that he regretted that he and Repole had not decided to pull Forte from the Derby field rather than allowing Kentucky regulatory veterinarians to make that call on Derby Day. As a result of the scratch, Forte was placed on a 14-day vet’s list, preventing him from running in the Preakness two weeks later. “I think he would have had a huge performance in the Preakness,” Pletcher said. Both Pletcher and Baffert said that their biggest concerns are the health of California racing and the growing expenses of horse ownership. But they also said they remain hopeful. “What we have in common,” Baffert said, pointing to Pletcher, “is that we’re both looking for a good 2-year-old that’s going to turn 3.” Panels offer ideas for racing’s future Following the Baffert and Pletcher interview were two panels featuring ideas. The first panel gathered together members of HISA’s Next Generation Advisory Group to discuss their main areas of focus. The second was the ambitiously titled and ambitiously staged “Fifty Ideas in Fifty Minutes,” in which five panelists serially used 60 seconds to describe one of 10 of their ideas to improve racing. The Next Generation Advisory Group focused principally on health and safety issues and the use of data, fixed odds, and new media to draw new people to the races. Not surprisingly, all of the panelists at least once used the term “social license,” the idea that every industry in the civilized world relies on an implied contract with society to operate. The Fifty Ideas panel was, necessarily, more the nitty on top of the gritty. The panelists included Alex Dadoyan, one of the sharpest officials in harness racing; Dora Delgado, the chief racing officer at Breeders’ Cup; Liza Hendriks, chief executive officer of Inglis Digital USA; Jay Hovdey, national columnist for The Blood-Horse and a former columnist at Daily Racing Form; and Dick Powell, a consultant on betting issues. Donna Barton Brothers, the former jockey and television commentator, kept the panel on track, and they indeed delivered 50 ideas in 50 minutes, many of them simple, some more grand, others just for the fun of it. Videos of the Symposium panels are eventually uploaded to the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program website, and racing officials not in attendance on Tuesday would be well-served to give it a look. Perhaps on Derby Day, when there’s about 50 minutes between the late races. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.