Santa Anita Park is home for Bob Baffert, giving the Hall of Fame trainer an inside perspective on the chaos that has surrounded the track the past 3 ½ months.
On Sunday, the 5-year-old gelding Arms Runner fell during a race and had to be euthanized after sustaining a catastrophic injury to his right front leg. It was the 23rd horse death at Santa Anita since Dec. 26, and once again brought a negative spotlight on the sport as it approaches its most popular time of the year — the Triple Crown races.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, has pressed for changes in horse racing for years and has renewed its calls for the elimination of drugs and whips.
Baffert did not train any of the 23 horses involved in the recent string of fatalities at Santa Anita but addressed the issue Tuesday during a teleconference conducted by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.
“This is our version of March Madness this time of year, but we’ve got the wrong madness going on,” Baffert said. “We’ve been getting beat down pretty good, but it’s a beautiful sport. People don’t really understand it. We’ve had some bad luck here, and it’s very unusual what’s going on here. We want to make it as safe as possible on these horses.
“These horses, they’re not our livelihood, they’re our way of life. There are a lot of people back here that are employees, and we have to make this work. I worry about the families and everything else. Racing needs to do well.”
Santa Anita halted competition for nearly three weeks to address the cause of the increased deaths. The California Horse Racing Board is taking steps to abolish the use of the jockey’s whip and race-day medications.
Some have speculated that record rainfall in California has led to the increase in deaths.
“I think this is unusual what happened this winter,” Baffert said. “I think some of it is an anomaly with the record rains and the surface here, they’ve made some changes with it. … I think some of these horses during the rainy season were just wore out.”
Baffert will have two Kentucky Derby hopefuls — Game Winner and Roadster — entered in Saturday’s Santa Anita Derby. Baffert is a fixture at the track and in the Santa Anita Derby, which he's won a record eight times. The Baffert-trained Justify won last year's Santa Anita Derby on the way to winning the Triple Crown.
Baffert was asked if he had any inhibitions about running his horses at Santa Anita.
“If I thought there was danger out there, I wouldn’t even bring my horses out there,” he said. “I’m feeling good about what’s going on here, but I don’t want to jinx myself.
“They’re athletes, and there can always be injuries. But hopefully we’re moving forward. We’ve been under this dark cloud, so hopefully we can move forward.”
On Friday, Claiborne Farm President Walker Hancock warned his Twitter followers that PETA has more members in California than the 600,000 signatures required to place a referendum on the ballot to eliminate horse racing in the state.
Baffert said Tuesday he’s not concerned with PETA.
“The negative publicity, I’m very concerned about that,” he said. “(PETA) doesn’t know how it really works here … and they don’t know how we take care of these horses and the employees and the families. There are a lot of jobs. They’ve never wanted horse racing, but my job is not to worry about them. I’m worried about these horses.”