Ointment or Injection?

Day 4 of the Hearing took place Thursday, 25th August 2022. Here is a bit about it.

The focal point in the fourth day of testimony at Bob Baffert’s appeal before before the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission (KHRC) was the debate over whether or not Medina Spirit’s 2021 GI Kentucky Derby disqualification for betamethasone was the result of an injection or the application of an ointment.

This argument has percolated for the better part of 16 months in various hearing and courtroom settings.

It is now being brought up again in front of the KHRC hearing officer to adjudicate the Hall of Fame trainer’s attempt to expunge from his record a 90-day suspension (already served) for the infraction. The appeal also seeks to reverse the KHRC’s disqualification of Medina Spirit from the Derby.

The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission called its final witnesses during the fourth day. Attorneys for the KHRC called three witnesses on Thursday: Dr. Scott Stanley, the director of an equine testing laboratory at the University of Kentucky; Dr. Ben Moeller, an analytical chemist at the drug-testing laboratory at UC-Davis; and Dr. Mary Scollay, an expert in equine pharmacology who is the executive director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium.

After the three testified, the attorneys indicated that they had no more witnesses to call, according to an attorney involved in the case.