Trump Offers Statement on Kentucky Derby Doping Scandal

As horse trainer blames 'cancel culture'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted May 11, 2021 4:00 AM CDT
Kentucky Derby Trainer Blames Doping Scandal on 'Cancel Culture'
Trainer Bob Baffert pets an outrider's horse while watching workouts at Churchill Downs Wednesday, April 28, 2021, in Louisville, Ky.   (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Bob Baffert blames "cancel culture" for the controversy surrounding the Kentucky Derby win of a horse he trained, Medina Spirit, which flunked a drug test after the race. "We live in a different world now," the trainer told Fox News on Monday. "This America is different. It was like a cancel culture kind of a thing so they’re reviewing it," he said of Churchill Downs' decision to invalidate the horse's win if the drug test results are upheld with a second test. Baffert said Medina Spirit will still race Saturday at Preakness Stakes, the next leg of the Triple Crown. ESPN reports that Baffert, however, will not attend, in an effort to minimize distractions. Baffert continues to insist no one on his team drugged Medina Spirit.

He has some ideas as to how the sample could have been tainted, chief among them the hypothesis that a groom who had been taking cough medicine urinated in the horse's stall, and the horse ate some of the urine-tainted hay, per the Guardian. "These horses don’t live in a bubble,” he said. “They’re in an open farm. People are touching them. He went from the Derby to after the Derby everybody’s out there touching them. I mean there’s so many ways these horses can get contaminated and when they’re testing at these really ridiculously low levels..." Even former President Trump had something to say on the matter: "So now even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junky. This is emblematic of what is happening to our Country. The whole world is laughing at us as we go to hell on our Borders, our fake Presidential Election, and everywhere else!" (More Kentucky Derby stories.)

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