Controversial Kentucky Derby winner buried at Old Friends Farm in Georgetown
Medina Spirit won Kentucky Derby 147 before being disqualified for failing a race day drug test
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - Crowds gathered, to pay their respects to a champion thoroughbred at Old Friends Farm in Georgetown.
“People came from all over the place,” said Michael Blowen, president and founder of Old Friends Farm. “They came from hundreds of miles people came to pay tribute to this horse on a rainy ugly day.”
Medina Spirit won’t be remembered as the horse who won Kentucky Derby 147, but the one that was disqualified after failing a race day drug test. Trainer Bob Baffert was subsequently suspended by the horse racing commission.
“Regardless of what the technicalities are, he was a marvelous racehorse, and Bob Baffert his trainer, and his wife Jill and the Zadons who owned him, agreed to let us bury him here at Old Friends,” said Blowen. “So all his fans could visit him.”
Last December, Medina Spirit collapsed suddenly and died at Santa Anita Park in California following a five-furlong workout. The preliminary cause of death was a heart attack. Today the three-year-old’s ashes were interred at the thoroughbred retirement facility during a ceremony open to the public.
“We watched him in the Kentucky Derby, and we came here to pay our last respects.”
Medina Spirit was laid to rest alongside Kentucky Deby winners Charismatic and War Emblem.
“I think it’s very suitable that he get buried next to them,” said Blowen. “So It’s a tribute to us. It’s a tribute to him.”
A proper burial for the horse at the center of one of racing’s biggest controversies.
“That just goes to show you that the horses are the reason we’re all here.”
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