us racing
Spirited away It has been a US Triple Crown season like no other, and it still isn’t finalised yet, reports Melissa Bauer-Herzog
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T WAS A TUMULTUOUS Triple Crown season in the US this spring between a potential disqualification and a record-breaking final leg of the series. Medina Spirit was the only horse Bob Baffert sent to this year’s Kentucky Derby (G1), was given the lead and never seriously pushed by other runners in the race to give his trainer a record-tying seventh Kentucky Derby victory. The success was also notable for his second-season sire Protonico with Medina Spirit becoming the first winner by a second season sire since Always Dreaming won for Bodemeister in 2017. Protonico is a son of Giant’s Causeway, and Medina Spirit was conceived off an advertised fee of $6,500, just one of 19 foals in that crop.
Medina Spirit was sold for just $1,000 as a short yearling at the Ocala Winter Sale when going through the ring with no reserve. A $35,000 OBS 2-Year-Old Sale graduate last June, Medina Spirit made national news as the “$1,000 Kentucky Derby winner.” Sadly, that story changed drastically just eight days later when trainer Bob Baffert
called a press conference after learning Medina Spirit had tested positive for 21 picograms of betamethasone – a drug with a zero tolerance threshold on race day in Kentucky. The trainer initially said he didn’t know how the corticosteroid got into the horse’s system, but later announced that the horse had been treated with a skin cream to fight a fungal infection on the horse’s hindquarters, and the product included betamethasone.
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