Flatter: Breeders’ Cup vet scratches come to a Head again

Del Mar, Calif.

“It’s a disgrace. You think I’m taking a horse to America that’s not ready to run?” – trainer Freddy Head to Daily Racing Form, Nov. 2, 2018.

“Ramatuelle arrived in good order, she’s been training well, and she’s been eating up every day. This is obviously a disappointment and a bit of a shock for all of us.” – trainer Christopher Head, Nov. 1, 2024.

“Déjà vu. It’s as if I lived through this before and didn’t really enjoy it.” – Charlie Harper, “Two and a Half Men,” Sept. 18, 2006.

You can’t make this stuff up. One day shy of exactly six years later, the son endures the same fate as the father at the Breeders’ Cup.

The news broke before sun-up Friday that Ramatuelle, a 3-year-old filly by Justify who won the Group 1 Prix de la Forêt last month in France, is out of Saturday’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Mile at Del Mar.

1st to last: Rating Breeders’ Cup Mile field.

Like Polydream for the same race in 2018 at Churchill Downs, Ramatuelle had her legs cut out from under her by what have become the two most dreaded words at these championships. Vet scratch.

Those aren’t wood chips the horses are walking on in the stable area at the junction of turf and surf. They are eggshells. The exact number of vet scratches this week is murky, because some owners and trainers have pre-emptively ruled out their horses. Do the high-profile exits of National Treasure and Idiomatic count?

With the vets claiming doctor-client privilege prevents them from volunteering their diagnoses, we are left to wonder and wring our hands about the lack of transparency.

“Once they zone in on you, you just walk away,” said Bob Baffert, who had to scratch Non Compliant from Friday’s running of the Juvenile Fillies because of a troublesome PET scan. “That’s all you can do. It’s a no-win situation, because what if something does happen? Oh, my God.”

But now it is, as our sitting president might say, a big bleeping deal, because it happened again to the Head family. For five generations it has been the most revered racing name in France. If this is the sport of kings, the Heads are the true royalty.

We Americans really got to know Freddy Head in 1987 and 1988, when he rode Miesque to consecutive triumphs in the Breeders’ Cup Mile. A six-time champion jockey in France, he became a trainer who would win the Mile three times with Goldikova from 2008 to 2010. If the Breeders’ Cup ever started naming its races for the individuals who made them great, it damn well better start by calling it the Freddy Head Mile.

When he was told six years ago by Kentucky veterinarians that Polydream could not run in the Mile, he said his pleas about the filly’s goofy gait fell on deaf albeit licensed ears.

“She trots in an awkward way, because she has offset knees,” Head told DRF in the heat of the moment, adding that “I’ve tried to take (the vets) on the track to see her gallop. They wouldn’t come.”

Head showed them. The morning of the race from which she had been denied gate entry, Polydream breezed at full speed in full view of whoever cared to watch from beneath the twin spires. She would race four times the following year before being retired.

Oh, yes. Freddy Head never did bring another horse to America before he retired two years ago. His son Christopher, 38, was all dressed up and ready to go for the first time in the Breeders’ Cup this week. And then, well, like father, like son.

“Although Ramatuelle’s PET-scan report stated ‘no definitive major concern for breakdown was identified,’ it showed signs of bone remodeling,” co-owner Arthur Hoyeau said in a statement posted to X on Friday morning. “While this is common in 3-year-olds, it prompted the decision to proceed with an abundance of caution and withdraw her from the race.”

Where Freddy Head did not hide his anger six years ago, Christopher Head and team Ramatuelle have been more circumspect with their seething.

“She’s healthy and well, and that’s what really matters,” the young trainer said in Hoyeau’s statement. “There will be more Breeders’ Cups for this stable, and we’ll look forward to those opportunities.”

One wonders. Ramatuelle was ticketed for next week’s Fasig-Tipton sale in Kentucky, but Hoyeau said “we will take a day to carefully consider her next steps.”

So, too, might connections from around the world who pre-entered a record 80 international horses to this Breeders’ Cup. If they run an increasing risk of strident veterinary rulings and the liability of the doubt with gray areas of PET scans, then that number might plunge. Who wants to blow money on a business trip when working from home is fiscally safer?

This does not even bring into play the rogue veterinarian who went all Alexander Haig on the 2021 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. He took matters into his own hands to scratch Modern Games, yes, from Europe, over a gate incident that he did not interpret correctly. Three years later we still do not have the last of the details that led to the horse being put back in the race for purse money only, screwing bettors from the winnings they were owed when Modern Games subsequently finished first.

Now we have vet scratches that are not openly and thoroughly reported thanks to the convenience of doctor-patient confidentiality. Owners should be made to sign a waiver on that before nominating for future Breeders’ Cups. For now, that seems like a paper pusher’s pipe dream.

That we are in California, where 38 horse deaths five years ago at Santa Anita still cast a shadow over the sport, is not forgotten. The reminders have come every morning this week in walks through the Del Mar stable area. It seems like the number of doctors and uniformed security should be counted like ground troops in a military invasion. “Who are they looking at now?” has been uttered so often, it sounds like a catechism.

Since he lived through the 2019 crisis and had the good fortune not to lose any horses through it, Baffert said he empathizes with the challenge of putting on two big days of racing and having all the horses come back safely.

“They’re in a tough situation,” he said Thursday. “There’s a lot of vets. It’s not like they single you out or anything like that. If they see something, then all right, there’ll be other days. It’s different, but it’s the world we live in.”

Ron Flatter’s regular weekly column returns Nov. 29 from an upcoming vacation, appearing Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.