Bob Baffert won’t be at the 2022 Kentucky Derby, and yet he might have the favorite for the 2022 Kentucky Derby.
How can this be, you ask? After all, the Thoroughbred trainer is in the first year of a two-year private property suspension by Churchill Downs, and the second week of a 90-day suspension by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. Both penalties stem from Baffert trainee Medina Spirit testing positive after winning the 2021 Kentucky Derby.
Thus Baffert’s horses have been ineligible for earning qualifying points to this year’s Derby. That didn’t keep Baffert from training prospective colts for this year’s race. And when it became clear the judicial system would not aid Baffert’s efforts to overturn the ban, his owners shipped their top Derby prospects to other trainers.
