Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit returns positive drug test, as trainer Bob Baffert vows to fight ‘wrongdoing’

KENTUCKY DERBY winner Medina Spirit has tested positive for banned substances, trainer Bob Baffert has confirmed.

Baffert revealed the horse was found to have had 21 picograms of the steroid betamethasone, double the legal threshold in Kentucky racing, in a postrace sample.

It is the fifth Baffert trained horse to fail a drug test this year, and it is the same drug that was found in another Baffert trained horse Gamine last year.

According to the New York Times Baffert trained horses have failed at least 29 drug tests in his 40 years of training.

However he protested his innocence saying: “I got the biggest gut-punch in racing, for something I didn’t do.”

Medina Spirit won the Derby earlier this month, Baffert’s record seventh success at Churchill Downs.

The horse is due to race in the Preakness, the Triple Crown’s second jewel, on Saturday.

Baffert insisted he will be transparent with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, and added: “I don’t feel embarrassed, I feel like I was wronged.

“We’re going to show them everything. One thing about it in California, everything is documented every day what the horse gets. This horse was never treated with that. He’s a great horse, he doesn’t deserve this. He ran a gallant race.”

He added: “This shouldn’t have happened. “There’s a problem somewhere. It didn’t come from us. There’s problems in racing. But it’s not Bob Baffert.

“I’m worried about our sport. Our sport, we’ve taken a lot of hits as a sport.

“These are pretty serious accusations here, but we’re going to get to the bottom of it and find out. We know we didn’t do it.”