Jason Kelce can ‘virtually guarantee’ he has CTE, sparked by a Secretariat doping theory
Kelce speculated on his New Heights podcast that Secretariat, the best racehorse of all time and known for his enlarged heart, was “juiced to the gills.”
On X, formerly Twitter, Jason Kelce confirmed that he’s almost certainly going to suffer from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a form of brain damage that is experienced by many football players after their careers due to repeated head trauma. But the reason he got to that point in the first place might surprise you.
Kelce got into hot water with an unexpected group of people on social media last week — Secretariat fans. Kelce speculated on his New Heights podcast that Secretariat, the best racehorse of all time and known for his enlarged heart, was “juiced to the gills.”
He doubled down on that position on X on May 9, writing a long post presenting his theory that Secretariat may have been doping when the horse won the 1973 Triple Crown, since an enlarged heart is a symptom of steroid use.
Secretariat is long dead and no definitive conclusions can be drawn on whether the horse was using steroids — but horse racing fans (who knew?) put on their best Philadelphia fan impression and went after Kelce on X. Even the family that owned Secretariat stepped in to share its “outrage” over Kelce’s comments.
One fan aimed to take a shot at Kelce by trying to make a parallel as “objectionable and unfounded” — what Kelce claimed about Secretariat — only to run into a speed bump when Kelce agreed with the poster.
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“You know who else makes unsubstantiated claims not backed up by facts. People suffering from CTE,” the poster wrote.
“I mean I can virtually guarantee that I have CTE, all the research would suggest I have some degree of it,” Kelce responded. “I think it is entirely reasonable to assume I have some degree of that pathology.”
But ultimately, while Kelce didn’t abandon his belief in the horse’s potential doping, he said he regretted ever bringing the topic up in the first place.
“I understand, I don’t take offense at all,” Kelce responded to the poster. “What I’m saying is that it’s completely reasonable to think I have CTE. Even though there is no test to see if I currently have CTE, the evidence suggests I probably do. Just like the reality that a lot, if not most of the high level horses of the 70s and 80s were doping because adequate tests were not available. But it really doesn’t accomplish anything to bring this up, I don’t know why I started, Secretariat was still a fantastic horse and legendary specimen.”
Are Secretariat fans even more intense than Philly fans? Or even worse, Swifties? Kelce certainly got a taste of that for himself this week.