Medina Spirit Positive Drug Test Confirmed, May Become Second Winning Horse in Kentucky Derby History to Be Disqualified

Medina Spirit has officially tested positive once again.

The colt, trained by Bob Baffert, initially tested positive last month, and the results have been confirmed with a second drug test as of Tuesday (June 2).

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Medina Spirit may now be the second horse in the history of the race, which has spanned 147 years, to be disqualified as the winner due to a failed drug test.

Clark Brewster, a lawyer who represents Medina Spirit’s owner Amr Zedan, said a laboratory at the University of California, Davis confirmed the presence of betamethasone, a corticosteroid injected into joints to reduce pain and swelling, at a prohibited level.

That being said, the lawyer claims the laboratory did not test blood or urine samples for presence of other compounds, “which could prove the trace positive came from an inadvertent and materially inconsequential contamination sourced from a topical ointment used to treat Medina Spirit for a skin lesion on his hip.”

Bob Baffert previously spoke out about the positive test, blaming “cancel culture” and saying racing officials were out to get him. He later said he treated the horse for a rash with an antifungal cream called Otomax, which contains the drug in question.

The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission has agreed to send the original blood and urine tests to an independent laboratory for analysis, according to the lawyer, to determine whether they can prove the source to be the topical ointment.

The horse has not yet been disqualified from winning the Derby, but if it happens, the owner will lose more than $1.8 million in winnings. The only time it’s happened before is in 1968, when winner Dancer’s Image tested positive for a banned anti-inflammatory.

“We’re hopeful that reasonable minds and good-intentioned regulators can see what it is, and what it is not, and not have a draconian response,” the lawyer said in a statement.

Find out what happened when the horse first tested positive.