When Medina Spirit won the Kentucky Derby two weekends ago, it was yet another feather in the cap of trainer Bob Baffert, but the week since has been anything but a normal Derby winner media tour, as Baffert has had to answer for the horse testing positive for a banned substance.
What ensued was an incredibly surreal timeline that included Donald Trump calling the horse “a junky,” which is an objectively hilarious thing to call a horse, Baffert blaming “cancel culture” for his horse testing positive for a banned substance, and then later coming up with the excuse that a groom at the stable took cough syrup and then peed in the horse’s hay, which he ate and then caused him to test positive — which, stunningly, is an excuse he’s used before.
Unsurprisingly, none of that really flew with people in the horse racing space and on Tuesday, Baffert issued a statement through his attorney admitting that they gave the horse an anti-fungal ointment for weeks that contained the banned substance found in the positive test.
Statement released this AM by Bob Baffert’s lawyer Craig Robertson states Medina Spirit was treated with an anti-fungal cream that contained betamethasone. pic.twitter.com/azxjxAzpKa
— Alicia Hughes (@AHughesTVG) May 11, 2021
Nothing helps your claim that you accidentally and unknowingly gave your horse a banned substance for almost a full month like going on Fox News to blame cancel culture and then lying about someone peeing in the horse’s hay. Even if its true, your job as a horse trainer is to know all the things you’re giving your horse and what is in them, so if the vet recommends an ointment one of the first questions you should look into is, “does this have anything on the banned substance list?”
Alas, this should be the end of the Bob Baffert media tour as its going to be hard to rail against cancel culture or Robitussin’d up stable workers when it was a cream you gave the horse daily for weeks that had the banned substance in it. In short:
— Chuma Okeke stan (@abt05c) May 11, 2021