Kentucky Derby favorite Forte has been scratched from the race. The colt, trained by Todd Pletcher, was coming into the Derby on a five-race winning streak.
, who received a two-year suspension from Churchill Downs in June 2021 after his apparent Derby winner that year, Medina Spirit, tested positive for an excess level of a legal drug that must clear a horse’s system by race time.
Forte’s departure as a 4-1 choice threw the race odds into wildness, leaving as possible favorites the Arkansas Derby winner Angel of Empire and the Blue Grass Stakes winner Tapit Trice, another trainee of the training giant Pletcher.
Thirteen Derbies this century have run with a number of entries below the allotted 20, while 10 have run with a full 20. Forte’s exit marked the second time the fate had hit Pletcher, who has entered 62 horses in the Derby since 2000 and has won in 2010 and 2017 , and Repole, who won the Belmont Stakes last June in a personal breakthrough . It follows upon the 2011 Kentucky Derby when Uncle Mo, the second choice that Saturday morning, scratched with an illness veterinarians struggled to identify at that time.
This scratch, however, comes in an era of greater scrutiny of the horse racing industry as it struggles to account for its record of equine safety.
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