The trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit is faulting “cancel culture” for calls to remove the horse from the Preakness Stakes after the horse failed a drug test.
Bob Baffert, a seven-time Derby winner, denied that the horse had been given any drugs and criticized efforts to disqualify the horse from the Preakness, the second of the three Triple Crown contests. He singled out Churchill Downs’s statement on suspending Baffert as “pretty harsh.”
“With all the noise going out, you know, we live in a different world now. This America’s different, and it was like a cancel culture kind of a thing,” he told Fox News’s Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino on Monday.
KENTUCKY DERBY WINNER MEDINA SPIRIT FAILS DRUG TEST, HALL OF FAME TRAINER SUSPENDED
While reiterating that he “did not cheat to win the Kentucky Derby,” Baffert explained the lengthy protocols to verify the results of the positive drug test, adding that it’s possible there was a false positive.
After winning the Derby on May 1, Medina Spirit tested positive for drugs on Sunday. The horse reportedly had 21 picograms of betamethasone, which is 11 picograms above the legal limit in Kentucky racing, in his system.
“Yesterday, I got the biggest gut punch in racing for something I didn’t do. It’s disturbing. It’s an injustice for the horse,” Baffert said of the test results, according to NBC Lexington affiliate LEX 18.
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If Medina Spirit is disqualified, runner-up Mandaloun will be declared the winner. The last horse to be disqualified for a positive drug test was Dancer’s Image in 1968, prompting the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to recognize the runner-up as the winner of that year’s Derby, except for pari-mutuel payoffs.
The positive drug test does not immediately disqualify Medina Spirit from the Preakness, which is set to take place on Saturday. If he wins that race, then he will need to win the Belmont Stakes on June 5 in Elmont, New York, in order to become the 14th Triple Crown winner in history.
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