(Life Is Good / Photo Courtesy of Santa Anita)

Press Release / Via Twitter Accounts:

According to multiple sources and twitter accounts on Thursday afternoon, one of the top contenders for this year’s Kentucky Derby — Life Is Good — will be returning to training very soon but will have a new location and a new conditioner when that happens.

Life Is Good, who suffered an injured ankle that required surgery and knocked him off the trail to this year’s Derby and Triple Crown series, will not be going back to “super trainer” Bob Baffert, but, instead, will be shifted to New York and the barn of Hall of Famer trainer Todd Pletcher.

Here is what WinStar Farm President Elliott Walden released as an official statement on the colt, and was picked up on many Twitter feeds:

In this last start, Life Is Good won the San Felipe Stakes in style and was most experts’ overwhelming choice as the favorite for this year’s Derby.

But the colt, who drifted out late in the stretch of that major Derby prep, was later determined to have sustained an injury and was laid up before he underwent corrective surgery to fix the ankle issues.

It will be interesting to see what owners do with their horses as Baffert continues to be under siege for the positive test result following this year’s Kentucky Derby, which was won by Baffert’s 3YO colt Medina Spirit. Ironically enough, Medina Spirt was easily defeated by Life Is Good in the San Felipe.

To date, Life Is Good has raced just three times and has won them all. Most of them, he has won impressively. He broke the maiden in November 2020 and followed that up with a win in the Sham Stakes the next time out.