Earlier this week, the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame announced its 17 voting finalists for its 2024 class. Those with a vote (self included) will receive ballots soon, and the top vote-getters will be enshrined in Saratoga Springs this summer.

The most polarizing name on the list is Justify. Acting as though this is straightforward either way is naive at best and biased at worst, and when I tweeted that I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with him, I wasn’t blowing smoke.

What do writers do when things get puzzling? We write through it. With that in mind, let’s discuss the 2018 Horse of the Year and a fascinating question: Is Justify a Hall of Famer?

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It makes sense to start with a primer on why we’re here. The case for Justify is quite simple and can be summed up in four words: Undefeated Triple Crown winner.

Justify didn’t make a single start as a 2-year-old. Instead, he broke his maiden at first asking in January, won an allowance race, beat Bolt d’Oro to the wire in the Santa Anita Derby (more on that later), and became the 13th horse to sweep America’s three marquee races for 3-year-olds (and just the second since Affirmed did it 40 years earlier).

He was retired a few months after the Belmont Stakes, and a mild Horse of the Year debate ensued when Accelerate rampaged through California’s biggest races for older horses and annexed the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Before any member of the ever-present Bob Baffert fan club goes after me, I want it noted that I strongly believed Justify was the easy Horse of the Year choice (and wrote about it on this very website).

Most voters agreed. Justify won the trophy and went off to the breeding shed. However, in the past few years, new details have come to light about a positive drug test that came after the Santa Anita Derby. The California Horse Racing Board opted not to disqualify him due to environmental contamination, but in December of 2023 (nearly six years after the race), the Los Angeles County Superior Court ordered the CHRB to set aside their ruling, DQ Justify, and install Bolt d’Oro as the race’s winner.

Without the Kentucky Derby points he earned in the Santa Anita Derby, Justify would not have made the field on the first Saturday in May. Churchill Downs has said it has no plans to alter the results of the 2018 Kentucky Derby, but it’s not illogical to wonder if he should have been in the gate.

Additionally, Justify retired after the Belmont and never faced older horses. Not running in races such as the Breeders’ Cup Classic opened the door for another runner to be considered, by some, a viable threat for Horse of the Year, and in an age where horses don’t run as much, a longer career would have certainly been more appreciated by some in the voting bloc.

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To try to make some sense of this, I dove into the history books. On Tuesday, I asked if any Hall of Fame horse carried as much “baggage” as Justify. When in doubt, some degree of precedent helps, and I wanted to see if there were any comparable situations.

The answer: Not really. A couple of horses went through strange situations before being immortalized. Grey Lag raced at age 13 against claimers after falling into the wrong hands. Bewitch’s signature win as a 2-year-old, over Calumet Farm stablemates Citation and Free America, may not have been entirely on the level. Safely Kept may not have made it into the Hall of Fame had Dayjur not jumped a shadow late in the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Sprint. Unfortunately, that list also includes Exceller, who was enshrined in 1999 (two years after being sent to the slaughterhouse).

Those stories, though, are pretty different from the one Justify carries, so no dice there. I was, however, able to find a few answers to the “never faced older horses” question.

For the most part, horses enshrined in the Hall of Fame have some longevity to them. However, Justify would be far from the first horse to go in having never faced older rivals. I count at least five honored horses who share that distinction. That list includes another Bob Baffert trainee, Point Given, as well as Tim Tam, Count Fleet, Colin, and, sadly, the ill-fated Ruffian.

That list mainly features horses who suffered career-ending injuries. Justify did require time off, but probably could have continued racing as a 4-year-old. However, as I’ve discussed time and time again on various platforms, the breeding industry is the tail that wags the dog in racing, and there was simply much more guaranteed money to be made sending Justify to stud.

(One quick note: I’m seeing some pro-Justify people support his case by mentioning his early success as a sire. One’s breeding career should have absolutely nothing to do with a Hall of Fame case. The Hall of Fame is for what happens from the starting gate to the wire, not for the results of activities in the breeding shed. Please stop.)

I’m fairly old-school. I like when horses run for long periods of time and do so at racing’s top level. Having said that, while Justify’s short career isn’t ideal, I also can’t hold it against him too much. Add in the likelihood of fellow six-time starter Flightline being a first-ballot Hall of Famer in a few years, and it’s entirely possible longevity just doesn’t matter much anymore.

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A unique convergence of events makes this one of the weirdest Hall of Fame questions since the institution opened its doors in the 1950’s. Bob Baffert, of course, has dealt with multiple high-profile positive drug tests. In addition to Justify, a drug test on initial 2021 Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit showed betamethasone, and Gamine was disqualified from a third-place finish in the 2020 Kentucky Oaks due to the presence of that same substance.

Baffert is in the Hall of Fame. In addition to Point Given, other former Baffert trainees such as Arrogate, American Pharoah, Silverbulletday, and Silver Charm all have plaques in Saratoga, too.

To call the situation awkward would be an understatement. Nothing about this feels particularly clean. A “yes” vote seems ignorant of an awful lot of facts. A “no” vote…also seems ignorant of an awful lot of facts.

In the absence of much precedent (other than “a few horses with short careers are in”), I keep coming back to the decision made by Churchill Downs. That entity, which has made zero friends in the Baffert camp over the last several years, has opted not to revisit the results of the 2018 Kentucky Derby. Given everything that’s happened since Medina Spirit crossed the wire first in 2021, CDI doing that would have been far from shocking.

Without that race on Justify’s resume, he’s almost certainly not a Hall of Famer (perhaps that incentivizes his connections to run the horse as a 4-year-old, but that’s strictly hypothetical). It being there, however, pushes Justify to a level of rarified air. The previous 12 Triple Crown winners are all enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Only one, Seattle Slew, was also undefeated when he pulled it off.

No, it’s not pretty.

No, it’s not an easy decision.

No, anyone involved in the nearly-six-years-long process to figure out what happened with the post-Santa Anita Derby positive test, and how it should affect the result of the race, should not be involved in such a decision, at all, ever again.

Yes, Justify is a Hall of Famer.