Medina Spirit, the Kentucky Derby champion, tested positive for betamethasone, an anti-inflammatory corticosteroid that is legal in horse racing up to a certain stage. Following that, further research will be conducted to decide if Medina Spirit’s victory at Churchill Downs will be overturned, and its trainer, Bob Baffert, has already been barred from the track.
In reaction to the accusations, Baffert went on the offensive, appearing on Fox News on Monday morning to clarify the situation. The clip below is genuine, and it features an adult blaming cancel culture for accusations of doping against a horse who tested positive for elevated levels of a controlled substance.
“Well, I haven’t heard anything officially, they haven’t told me anything,” Baffert said when asked about whether or not Medina Spirit will be able to run at the Preakness this weekend. “I know when Churchill Downs came out with that statement, that was pretty harsh. And I think they had to just … you know, with all the noise going out … we live in a different world now. This America’s different. And it was like a cancel culture kind of a thing, so they’re reviewing it, I haven’t been told anything, we’re prepared to run.”
It gets better! Here was Baffert’s explanation for what happened…
…and here is why this is even more absurd than it seems on the surface.
As a rundown, a man who looks eerily like Ashley Schaffer from Eastbound and Down went on Fox News and said that this was the second time someone on cough medicine peed on some hay that a horse ate, and the horse tested positive for some kind of substance as a result. The difference between that time and this time is that Baffert said that a right-wing buzzword is at fault. Anything to prove that the horse is not, as former president Donald Trump put it, a “junky.”
