Kentucky Derby favorite Omaha Beach has been scratched due to a throat condition.
Here are details:
Omaha Beach, the morning-line favorite for the 145th Kentucky Derby on Saturday at Churchill Downs, will be scratched owing to an entrapped epiglottis, trainer Richard Mandella said Wednesday.
“He was coughing, which made us suspicious, and we scoped him,” Mandella said.
“It’s not anything we can fix to have him run on Saturday, so we’re going to have to scratch him.”
Mandella said the issue is “fixable,” but the timing is terrible.
“He’ll miss two to three weeks of training,” Mandella said. “Alysheba had it a month before he won the Kentucky Derby. But we can’t fix it and run this weekend.”
Mandella said the problem is that Omaha Beach has “swollen tissue under the epiglottis.”
“It’s entrapped, so it can’t do its job,” Mandella said.
Updated lines following the scratch:
Updated Derby odds after the defection of Omaha Beach pic.twitter.com/KN1TYUlmTw
— John Lewis WDRB (@JohnWDRB) May 1, 2019
