After the infamous Derby DQ two years ago, after the disruptions caused by the coronavirus last year, the sport of racing seemed set to enjoy a panic-free Triple Crown run this year. How wrong that notion turned out to be. The announcement by Bob Baffert last Sunday that his Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit tested positive for a regulated corticosteroid, betamethasone, has upended the Triple Crown once again, one year after the series was rendered irrelevant due to the pandemic, and two years after Maximum Security earned the first in-race disqualification in Derby history by making the final turn look like a dog race. The lawyers having been satisfied, Medina Spirit will run in the Preakness, and the colt, given his gutsy Derby performance and the long history of Derby winners turning the stretch of the Preakness into a stallion ad, is the morning-line favorite. As part of the condition of his entry, pre-race blood and urine samples will need to test clean before he will be allowed to run. :: DRF's Preakness Headquarters: Contenders, latest news, past performances, analysis, and more The normally affable Baffert will be watching from California, where he makes his home, unwilling to face the prospect that a win by his horse in the Preakness may elicit the first boos for a Triple Crown race winner since the regal Empire Maker ruined the history-making hopes of the plebian, New York-bred Funny Cide in the hometown 2003 Belmont Stakes. If Baffert watches the full broadcast, he’ll see his face plenty. More than his horse, he’s earned the coverage. In statements issued this week, Baffert has contended that the betamethasone found its way into Medina Spirit’s blood sample through the daily application of an ointment used to treat dermatitis on the horse’s right hindquarters. There are before and after photos of the area. The ointment that was used, a veterinary product called Otomax, clearly states on its label that betamethasone is one of its three active ingredients. So, if the account is true, it’s a foolish, careless, sloppy mistake. Even people whose jobs don’t depend on earning millions of dollars from untainted racehorses are told a simple truth at the pharmacy: Read the label. Otomax is a prescription drug, so there’s blame to be spread around, from the veterinarian who prescribed it; to the assistants and stable staff in Baffert’s barn who had surely come to be wary of the word “betamethasone” after Gamine’s positive last year following the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks; and, of course, to the trainer himself, who publicly vowed late last year to do better. Unfortunately for the racing industry, the consequences of Baffert’s mistake don’t land on his barn alone. Since the Sunday announcement, the critics of racing have once again been invigorated, intent on sweeping the entire industry out with Baffert’s dirty laundry, some using sophisticated strategies to undermine the sport’s foundations. PETA, the animal-rights organization that postures itself as a clean-racing advocate while ruthlessly seeking the elimination of the sport, filed a complaint with Kentucky regulators demanding that bettors get paid as if the likely DQ happened on track, a tactic to sow dissatisfaction among gamblers by pushing for a solution that is fancifully palatable to them but financially ruinous to the sport. The sport has survived a Derby drug positive before, but it’s been more than 50 years since it happened. Dancer’s Image came into the 1968 Preakness after testing positive in the Derby two weeks earlier for phenylbutazone, a painkiller. In a parallel to the sport’s current predicament, the connections of Dancer’s Image admitted to treating the horse with the drug, six days prior to the Derby, to alleviate chronically sore ankles. They figured the drug would clear the horse’s system by the time the race came around. Nevertheless, the owner of Dancer’s Image, the New Englander Peter Fuller, went to his grave insisting that “they” got to his horse, a Southern hard-boot sabotage for his advocacy for civil rights. In that Preakness, shame was followed by indignity. Dancer’s Image finished third but was disqualified to eighth after stewards ruled that he interfered with Martins Jig. After the race, Dancer’s Image never ran again. Bad ankles. Fuller kept on, filing appeal after appeal. After four years of costly legal wrangling, the DQ stood. The late 1960s and early 1970s are sometimes referred to as the sport’s glory years. Attendance at Pimlico for the 1968 Preakness, which was televised on CBS, was 40,247. From 2010 to 2019, amidst what many consider to be racing’s painfully slow decline into irrelevance, announced attendance at Pimlico for the Preakness averaged 124,000 people. Those attendance figures are hardly reflective of the appeal of the sport to the masses. They’re bolstered by infield concerts and injected with the legends of lunatic infield debauchery. But the crowds make for great TV. They’re also a reminder that the sport does still have legs, no matter how many bad actors undermine it, and despite the rapidly evolving consensus about what should and shouldn’t be allowed in activities involving the use of animals. So there’s real harm to be done to the Triple Crown, to the sport, by Baffert’s litany of positives, the latest being the most profoundly damaging. In media appearances sometimes painful to watch on Sunday and Monday, Baffert cast the net far and wide for his problems. And yet by the end of Monday, his own inquiry into Medina Spirit’s positive had landed on the real culprits: himself and Otomax. And yet Baffert persists. He is contending that even if betamethasone was present in the horse’s system, it was an honest mistake, and it had no bearing on the horse’s performance in the Derby. He’s vowed to “fight for” the horse, as if anyone believes anymore that this is solely about the horse. If the positive is appealed, expect to hear the same arguments that are always heard: The regulation of betamethasone, an injectable corticosteroid with legitimate veterinary uses, has gone too far, and those rules are based on shoddy science anyway. If you are a horseman, or if you are deep into the game and know of its many deficiencies, you probably have some sympathy for those points. But the rules are the rules, and until they are changed, you have to play by them, just like everyone else. And if the Otomax story is legitimate, then it’s hard to ignore that this entire episode could have been avoided by having a single person in Baffert’s barn who knew the rules and respected them. Instead, the racing industry has Baffert’s vow to fight the positive, despite admitting to all still listening that the horse was treated, daily, right up until the day before the first Saturday in May, with an ointment that contained the regulated substance that triggered the violation, the uproar, and the outrage. It has Baffert pretending that there is a path to redemption by acknowledging one’s mistake yet refusing to take responsibility for its consequences. It has Baffert ignoring the most helpful advice he could ever be given, having found himself in a hole. First, stop digging. Please, for horse racing’s sake, just stop digging.