Un-Justified

You never want to say horse racing is as crooked as a dog's hind leg, because that would be mixing your animal kingdom metaphors, and it would be an insult to your dog, besides. Horse racing is waaay more crooked than that.

It's as crooked as Lance Armstrong, apparently. And in pretty much the same way.

Thanks to great reporting by the New York Times yesterday, a bombshell detonated in the Sport of Kings: Apparently Bob Baffert's 2018 Triple Crown winner, Justify, was as juiced as the Tour de France peloton. And everyone -- including Baffert and the officials charged with making sure the horses are clean -- knew it.

Here are the Cliff Notes: After winning the Santa Anita Derby on April 7, Justify tested positive for the scopolamine, a banned performance enhancer. But rather than disqualify the horse, which the rules dictate should have happened and which would have kept the undefeated Justify out of the Derby, California racing officials waited almost a month before confirming the results. That gave Baffert the time to request an independent test whose results wouldn't come back until after the Derby.

Which of course Justify won.

After which officials skipped protocol again, waiting until after Justify had won the Triple Crown to issue a ruling. That ruling was, surprise, surprise, to drop the case -- and also to de-escalate scopolamine from a disqualification-level substance to a fine-or-suspension substance.

And if you're thinking here, "I bet money had something to do with this," give yourself a gold star. Of course money had something to do with this. To be specific, it had $60 million to do with this, which is what Justify's breeding rights sold for.

California officials defended their actions by saying scopolamine can be found in jimson weed, so they weren't sure if Justify's positive test hadn't been due to contaminated feed. Drug lab experts,  however, say it's virtually impossible for the levels found in Justify's sample to have happened in that way. Sooo ...

So, yeah. Draw your own conclusions.

Me?

I'm headed to the nearest OTB. Got a line on a sure winner.

Scopolamine in the fifth at Aqueduct. I can't lose.