Medina Spirit Was So Much More Than the Demons He Battled
A eulogy
Medina Spirit, the horse who won the Kentucky Derby last year, trot-a-lotted off into equine Eden today. Medina Spirit died doing what he loved: practicing running around a race course to make money for tough Euro guys with names like “Big Tony” and “Queen Elizabeth,” and he probably had an enormous penis, but you don’t see headlines like that commemorating our Fallen Thee Stallion. No, instead these reports are crude, they’re violating HIPAA (the H stands for Horse), and they’re ignoring systemic mental health issues affecting horses today.
These headlines are tasteless:
From Kentucky CBS affiliate WLKY: “Medina Spirit, 2021 Kentucky Derby winner that failed drug test, has died”
From the Courier Journal: “Medina Spirit, disputed winner of 2021 Kentucky Derby, dies after workout”
From Forbes: “Kentucky Derby Winner Medina Spirit Dies Amid Doping Investigation Of High-Profile Trainer Bob Baffert”
Uh, yeah, he died under circumstances that might not be befitting of a stud from a thoroughbred family with long, aquiline noses, and yeah, Medina Spirit might have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs days after he won the Kentucky Derby last year, but horses are under A LOT OF PRESSURE. The drugs he was on were a fucking ointment, okay, allegedly?! And also, how is it any of our business?
Since none of these other journalists have the grace to say goodbye to Medina Spirit with any valor, I will do it myself. That’s right, unfunny feminist rag Gawker dot com is paying tribute to a horse who was felled by addiction:
You were so pretty and your eyes were so big. I love how horse’s eyelashes are like a beautiful screen siren’s. I will not mention the epidemic of overprescribing that has ravaged humankind and probably horsekind too because today we celebrate your life, but let me just say, even if I had some crooked Park Avenue doctor shoot my ass up with amphetamines every day like they do in the Edie Sedgwick oral history, I wouldn’t have been able to do what you did. I hope God is real. Goodbye, Horse!
