Suddenly, Bob Baffert is bad for business.

For those who follow thoroughbred racing, the very thought is hard to imagine. But there it is: The Baffert-trained Medina Spirit on Monday was stripped of his 2021 Kentucky Derby win and Baffert himself was suspended for 90 days. Mandaloun was declared the new winner following a ruling by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission stewards.

It was the latest insult added to the substantial injury to Baffert’s reputation as a top trainer. In the wake of Medina Spirit’s post-race test, which found the presence of the steroid betamethasone, Baffert was hit with a two-year track ban by Churchill Downs.

Medina Spirit died of a heart attack in December and once again, a harsh spotlight shined on Baffert.

He is now not only the most recognizable character in the sport and one of its most successful trainers, but its most controversial one as well. Baffert tumbled from a Hall of Fame icon to an easy mark for critics ranging from racing inspectors to wild-horse activists. After being a prince in the sport of kings, suddenly everyone wants a piece of Baffert.

But if those naysayers were being candid, they’d also have to admit that Baffert didn’t invent the often-shadowed world of modern thoroughbred racing. It’s long been a moveable scandal wrapped inside a drug culture that until recent years rarely gained much traction outside the industry. In that regard, it shares some similarities with Major League Baseball during the steroid era and the National Football League in any era.

That’s not an excuse for Baffert. He is taking a fall from which he might never recover. But it’s also important to remember he’s being made an example of in a game where there, but for some good fortune, many others might be standing in his place.

Baffert’s personal story is a compelling one. Born in Nogales, Arizona, down on the Mexican border, he was raised in the region’s Quarter Horse circuit amid a world of real cowboys and wise guys in broad-brimmed hats.

Call it a hunch, but I think he grew up to become a little of both.

Baffert’s biographer Steve Haskin, longtime national correspondent for The Blood-Horse magazine, wrote about the trainer throughout much of the 1990s, but would always remember being charmed by him.

A phone call from Baffert was always good copy, but “It was like playing poker with one of my boyhood Western heroes, Brett Maverick,” Hoskin writes in the introduction to the entertaining Bob Baffert: Dirt Road to the Derby. “When Maverick turned on the charm, you never noticed him pulling that fifth ace out of his boot. Even now, Bob can be holding five-of-a-kind in his hand or peddling me whatever goods he has to sell that day, and I just learn to accept it.

“The first inclination is to run him out of town on a rail, but there is such a personable and generous man underneath that devilish façade, you wind up backing off and enjoying the show.”

Now the show has changed and with it, Baffert’s role. He’s no longer the glib fellow with the trademark white hair forever standing in or near the winner’s circle. Now he’s the villain in a sport in sore need of some good news.

He’s paying for his sins, and so be it. But I think he’s also paying the price for others who are very lucky they aren’t sharing the glare of the spotlight that’s on him.

Baffert’s critics are not hard to find these days.

“We applaud the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission for taking action against American horse racing’s most infamous violator, Bob Baffert, and are pleased to see some justice brought to the tragic life and death of Medina Spirit,” Animal Wellness executive director Marty Irby said in a statement. “Baffert continues to drag horse racing through the mud in scandal after scandal, and we call on every racing jurisdiction in the nation to hold him accountable by reciprocating the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission’s suspension in their own state. We’re elated that Baffert won’t be participating in the upcoming 2022 Kentucky Derby and believe the horses will be better off, and the event will have more credibility, without him.”

Late in Baffert’s biography, a former wife reminisces about the arc of the trainer’s remarkable career from the dusty Quarter Horse circuit to the top of the thoroughbred world. Where once Baffert was truly a laid-back guy, as she calls him, being at the top of the sport changed him.

“It wasn’t until he came so close to winning the Derby with Cavonnier that he became obsessed with getting back there and succeeding,” she recalled. “Now, it’s seven days a week, and stress, and traveling all the time. He never takes a day off. I ask him, ‘Are you happy? You’ve reached the top. You’ve achieved what you wanted. Has it made you happy?’”

Those words were published in 1999. Since then, Baffert has trained some of the biggest winners in the history of a sport that goes back centuries, but is now in real trouble. Even with the disqualification of Medina Spirit, he still has six Kentucky Derby victories.

No one is bigger than the sport, but I’m left to wonder where horse racing will be when it doesn’t have Bob Baffert to kick around anymore.