Derby-winning trainer joins pro-horse racing activists

A laboratory at the University of California, Davis, confirmed that a second sample had found the anti-inflammatory drug betamethasone at a prohibited level, Clark Brewster, a lawyer who represents Medina Spirit’s owner Amr Zedan, said in the report. Medina Spirit’s initial sample after the May 1 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs tested positive for 21 picograms of betamethasone, over the legal limit in Kentucky racing.

An aggrieved harness-racing bettor received $20,000 in the settlement of a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in which he claimed he was cheated out of his winnings when a doped horse won a race in New Jersey in 2016. After the lawsuit was filed in March 2018, leading figures in harness racing said they had never before heard of such a lawsuit, which accused the trainer of fraud and racketeering. The general practice has been to reallocate the purse to other owners in the event a winning horse is later proven to have been doped, but not to pay back bettors.