She’d brought him into the world as a baby — and now can’t believe he is gone.
Gail Rice, the breeder who helped Medina Spirit’s mother as she struggled to give birth to him three years ago, had trouble accepting that the Kentucky Derby winner collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack Monday while training at the Santa Anita track in California.
“It was like no, you’re kidding me…this can’t be,” said Rice. “It doesn’t really sink in right away. You think this can’t be true. And then you start crying.”
But as upset as she is over the champion’s sudden passing, Rice is outraged that critics are now using his death as proof that the sport is inhumane and should be cancelled.
“I don’t see how people can say that we’re abusing them. If they saw how much care these horses get they wouldn’t be saying that,” she said. “But there are still people saying the horse was doped up and that’s why he had a heart attack. That didn’t happen. His heart burst.”
So what did cause the death of Medina Spirit?
Following his improbable win in Kentucky on May 1, the underdog colt tested positive for betamethasone, a pain-killing, anti-inflammatory steroid. Churchill Downs officials stripped Medina Spirit of the victory and banned his trainer, Bob Baffert, from entering his horses on any of their racetracks for two years.
“Mr. Baffert’s record of testing failures threatens public confidence in Thoroughbred racing and the reputation of the Kentucky Derby,” Churchill Downs Incorporated said in a statement.
“Failure to comply with the rules and medication protocols jeopardizes the safety of the horses and jockeys, the integrity of our sport and the reputation of the Kentucky Derby and all who participate,” the statement added. “Churchill Downs will not tolerate it.”
Baffert also got booted by the New York Racing Association, which will review his suspension in January.
The Hall of Fame trainer has a history of wins and failed drug tests in his stable and was found to have had 74 horses die under his care in his home state of California since 2000, according to a Washington Post report. Baffert claimed Medina Spirit never got betamethasone, a drug allowed as an injection therapy that can’t be present in the blood on race day because it potentially boosts performance.
He later said his vet used Otomax, a fungus-fighting skin ointment with the topical variety of betamethasone, to treat a rash on the horse’s hindquarters, applying it daily for a month until the day before the Derby. The matter remains under investigation by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission.
Baffert has discounted the amount of the betamethasone found in Medina Spirit — 21 picograms — as “very minute,” claiming that amount of the drug “wouldn’t affect the [performance of the] horse.” (A picogram is one-trillionth of a gram.)
But is it possible the drug had a long-term effect on the horse’s health?
“If they used it every day for six months, it could have a deleterious effect,” said Dr. Rick Arthur, a leading expert on horse health, who noted that Baffert’s team had been giving the corticosteroid ointment to Medina Spirit for a month prior to the Kentucky Derby.
“Long-term corticosteroid can impede the adrenal glands,” said Arthur, leading to lowered cortisol production by the body and possible side effects such as weight loss, fatigue and muscle weakness.
“But I have never recognized a problem with betamethasone because it’s typically used for a few days and it would be unusual to use it for more than two weeks.”
Even if overused, he said the drug wouldn’t become life-threatening because it doesn’t build up like other forms of steroids.
“Once it’s absorbed it has a very short half-life in the body,” he said.
He added that it’s unlikely betamethasone contributed to Medina Spirit’s heart failure.
“They’re totally unrelated,” he said. “Having studied this problem extensively, I will tell you there are no prior clinical signs with these presumptive cardiac failures.”
Medina Spirit’s body is now headed to a lab in San Bernardino run by the University of California at Davis, where a series of forensic tests will try to determine what killed him, according to the facility’s director, Dr. Ashley Hill.
The horse will undergo a necropsy, during which the body will be opened up and “we’ll look for obvious causes — fractured limbs or a large amount of blood, a fractured neck,” said Hill. “We take samples of all the organs and look at them under the microscope. We test for viruses, evidence of toxic substances. It’s up to the individual pathologist to explore whatever avenues that they feel are the most promising. The purpose is to determine the cause of death but also to use the information to prevent future incidents.”
Sadly, the unexplained death of a horse is “not atypical,” even among young thoroughbreds, said Hill, whose outfit — the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory — pioneered the science of equine postmortems, and performs hundreds of necropsies each year.
“About half the time we’re able to determine the cause,” she said. “About 20 percent of the time we can speculate as to the source, and the rest of the time, despite our best efforts, we can’t make a determination.”
Meanwhile, Santa Anita is notorious for its poor safety record. A total of 23 horses died at the track in 2019, 22 of which involved fatal injuries, with one heart attack, according to a state-run investigation led by Dr. Arthur.
That report found that some of the horses showed symptoms of excessive exercise, and the track was dinged for flouting safety rules.
“The major problem with Santa Anita was that the track had an inordinate amount of rain and wasn’t managed properly,” Arthur said. “There wasn’t necessarily a culture of safety.”
But, he added: “There’s been major improvements: more veterinary oversight and a more restrictive medication protocol. The results have been impressive.”
Deaths at Santa Anita dropped to 10 last year.
Medina Spirit was not the first champion horse to die in his prime.
“It happened to Swale,” noted Arthur, referring to the three-year-old colt who had won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes in 1984 but died suddenly eight days after the latter race while getting a sponge bath following a light workout. Heart failure was the cause.
Patrick Battuello, an advocate for the abolition of racing, argues that three-year-olds are too young to be thrust into racing.
“The typical horse does not reach full musculoskeletal maturity — bones not done growing, plates not done fusing — till around six,” he writes on his Horseracing Wrongs site.
“And the higher up, the slower the process, so that the bones in the spine and neck, of all places, are the last to finish. The typical racehorse is thrust into intensive training at 18 months, and raced at two. A two-year-old horse is the rough equivalent of a six-year-old child. This early, incessant grinding leaves many with chronic conditions like arthritis.”
The life expectancy of a thoroughbred is somewhere between 25 and 28, according to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.
Despite Baffert’s history of infractions, Rice believes the trainer is getting a raw deal.
“The horse didn’t get an injection,” she said. “He had ointment on his hip. I feel so sorry for Bob Baffert. He just doesn’t deserve it. They want to throw stones before anything is proven.”
After Medina Spirit died on Monday, Baffert released a statement, saying that: “My entire barn is devastated by this news. Medina Spirit was a great champion, a member of our family who was loved by all, and we are deeply mourning his loss. I will always cherish the proud and personal memories of Medina Spirit and his tremendous spirit.”
Rice remembers the horse’s spirit better than most. She said she was with Medina Spirit in the winner’s circle on Derby day, right after he’d finished first, and planted a kiss on the horse’s head.
“I told him, ‘You’re such a good boy.'”
Medina Spirit was among her favorites in her 40-year career as a breeder, she added.
Even so, she said, “I can’t be sad” about his tragic death.
“Look at what he did. I thank God for putting him in my life so I could have these experiences.”
