Bob Baffert on Fox News.

The last few days have seen quite the horse-racing story developing around Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit. The horse failed a post-race drug test after its win Saturday, which could lead to a disqualification barring the results of a second test, but that disqualification hasn’t formally happened yet. Meanwhile, trainer Bob Baffert (who has previously had quite a history of horses failing drug tests) went on Fox News Monday to call this potential disqualification “cancel culture” (as seen above), and also spread a story that the positive test here for betamethasone (at 21 picograms, more than twice the amount considered allowable) possibly came from a groom urinating in the horse’s stall after taking cough syrup:

Monday also saw Baffert insisting that Medina Spirit had never been treated with betamethasone, calling this “a complete injustice,” and vowing to send the horse on to compete in this week’s Preakness Stakes:

On Tuesday, though, Baffert had quite a change of tune, releasing a statement that indicated that yes, Medina Spirit was indeed treated with a rub containing betamethasone:

Interestingly enough, after all this, Medina Spirit is still going to be allowed to compete in the Preakness Stakes Saturday.

So, the horse isn’t cancelled after all. That seems like a very good thing for race broadcaster NBC (their coverage will air from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. on NBCSN, and from 2:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on the NBC broadcast network). There’s always intrigue when the Kentucky Derby winner still has a shot at a Triple Crown. And while the Triple Crown bid’s status is somewhat up in the air here (the Derby disqualification may happen before then, but Baffert has also suggested he may appeal, so the eventual result could take a while to get to), Medina Spirit certainly has drawn a lot of attention this week.

This will create some challenges for the NBC broadcast, though. They’ll now have to balance talk about the Medina Spirit controversy with a regular race preview and coverage of the rest of the field. We’ll see how they do with that.

[Tim Reynolds on Twitter; screengrab via Mediaite on Twitter]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.