While it still can conceivably be Otomax, the ointment, according to embattled trainer Bob Baffert, containing betamethasone that was applied to a skin lesion on Medina Spirit’s hip, that left the reported 21 picograms of the forbidden substance on Kentucky Derby’s race day in the bloodstream of the eventual winner, at least the presence of the drug in the horse has been buttressed in the last 24 hours by an elevated positive trace of the corticoid. The University of California at Davis laboratory registered a positive result of 25 picograms from the same blood sample. Exactly zero picograms, defined as one-trillionth of a gram, of betamethasone are permitted in Kentucky.

The legal and financial implications — for the sport, for Medina Spirit’s owner, for the embattled trainer in whose barn the trace occurred, and not least, for the bettors who backed the presumed eventual Derby winner Mandaloun — are far-reaching and will take time to shake out. But the positive result from the so-called “split sample” instantly caused several conflagrations, most spectacularly at Churchill Downs, who extended their initial two-week ban of the trainer who has won the most Kentucky Derbys in the race’s 147-year history to a rare two-year ban from racing at the storied track.

The additional bad news for Baffert, his owners and athletes will be that the ban will likely extend to Keeneland’s storied track, the site of the 2022 Breeders’ Cup races. The California irony here is that betamethasone is, within limits, not an entirely forbidden drug by that state’s racing commission so that — which may account for the apparently liberal application of the ointment containing the compound to Medina Spirit’s skin lesion — but the upshot for Baffert now is that, unless California decides to follow Kentucky’s example and ban Baffert generally, the trainer can be racing as usual at the 2021 Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar.

It’s axiomatic in the sport that great precision must be exercised in the veterinary details of caring for Thoroughbred athletes. One enormous ongoing irony of the positive presence of the drug in Medina Spirit has been and will be that it has now fallen to the lawyers and to the racing commissions to exhibit a form of what we might call regulatory “aftercare” of their two-legged clients. Two of the hardest-working lawyers in that regard have been Craig Robertson, the attorney for Bob Baffert, and Clark Brewster, the attorney for Medina Spirit’s owner Amr Zedan. As they confirmed the news of the second positive test on June 2, they added that the sample was being sent for subsequent tests for other substances — in the salve — that could prove that the salve was the source of the horse’s contamination. Those test results should be with us in the next week to ten days, it is thought.

Brewster told the AP that the second more comprehensive set of tests would, as he put it, “shed the light most prominently on the issue here for us. The whole basis for listing betamethasone is because it's injected into a joint and they want you not to inject the joints too close to the race, so the whole substantive basis is out the window if it's a salve, and it can be proven scientifically and empirically to be the salve."

Sounds hopeful, as Mr. Brewster has certainly been hired to sound. But there is a lot riding on what else is in those jars of Otomax, and whether any of that can be found to have been in Medina Spirit. As recently as April, a Kentucky Derby without at least one Bob-Baffert-trained contender in it was an unimaginable thing in American racing. For the legendary trainer, this will be a comedown of the most ignominious stripe. New York’s gaming commission has not yet made a ruling on extending Baffert’s banning, nor has California’s racing authority. Bottom line: The once-indomitable force of American racing, Bob Baffert, is in a tough spot.

According to Churchill’s racing rules, even if Medina Spirit’s bracing Derby run is disqualified — which is now thought likely but has not officially happened — win bets placed on the theoretical “new” Derby winner, placer Mandaloun, will not be honored. The tote is the tote, in Kentucky.