PETA Statement re Forte Trainer Todd Pletcher’s Suspension

For Immediate Release:
May 12, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding the suspension of Todd Pletcher, the scratched Kentucky Derby favorite Forte’s trainer:

Trainer Todd Pletcher, who has been suspended following Forte’s September drug test, is Bob Baffert 2.0., showing once again that even the stars are bad guys whose insatiable desire to win comes at the expense of the horses’ health. Forte was allegedly administered an arthritis drug for pain and inflammation that isn’t permitted in racing, and then Forte’s co-owner Mike Repole and Pletcher hushed it up before his race in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. Repole’s crocodile tears over the deaths of horses at Churchill Downs were unconvincing, since he then tried to persuade the state veterinarian to let Forte race—with a sore foot—in the Kentucky Derby. Even in the top tier of this so-called “sport,” horses are sacrificed to ego and greed.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.