‘Is this too perfect?’ All was going right for Derby favorite — until it all went wrong.

Trainer Richard Mandella said Thursday his former Kentucky Derby favorite Omaha Beach gave almost no indication to anyone that anything was amiss this week until he coughed a couple of times during his morning gallop on Wednesday.

“You couldn’t ask a horse to look any better or train any better this whole period we’ve been here,” Mandella said at a news conference Thursday to elaborate on his decision to scratch him from the race. “If you didn’t look up his nose with a scope, you wouldn’t know anything’s wrong.

“But I’m sure by the time he hit the quarter pole, he would know it was there. And as bad as it felt yesterday, it would be a horrible feeling to have him not finish well and know I was at fault for running him. So, we had to do the right thing by the horse. And that’s give it up and go to the next step.”

Omaha Beach has an entrapped epiglottis, a condition where the soft palate swells and wraps around the epiglottis.

“When a horse entraps, it really limits their breathing and blocks about a third of the airway and in a race of this magnitude, that’s too much to give up,” said Dr. Foster Northrup, the veterinarian who did the initial examination. A second opinion confirmed the diagnosis.

Surgery was scheduled to be performed later Thursday at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington.

Tears welled in Mandella’s eyes, at times, as he spoke in the Churchill Downs press room where the winners usually take their place after the bed of roses is awarded.

Coming in off three straight wins, including an impressive run in the Arkansas Derby, Omaha Beach had Triple Crown-winning jockey Mike Smith on board and what looked to be Mandella’s and owner Rick Porter’s best chance of a Derby win in their decades-long careers in the sport.

Mandella said he had to gather himself in his hotel room before calling Porter and Wayne Hughes, whose Spendthrift Farms has just purchased Omaha Beach’s breeding rights. A reporter asked Mandella if this was the biggest disappointment of his career.

“I’d say yes and I guess it’s because the Derby is what it is. And this horse, if you’ve all been around the barn, you can see how special he is. It just seemed like everything is so in line. In fact I had a thought, ‘Is this too perfect?’ Because nothing’s that perfect. And we found out what wasn’t.”

Omaha Beach developed a sore throat just more than a week ago, but it cleared up with treatment. “But it came back with a vengeance,” Mandella explained before the news conference outside his barn where he and Omaha Beach were still receiving visitors and well-wishers early Thursday morning.

Once the new diagnosis was in, there was no question what Omaha Beach’s connections had to do, Mandella said.

“Horsemen care for their animals,” Mandella said. “And we don’t always get the warning and things happen, but horsemen always look for the warning signs and don’t want to do the wrong thing.”

Perhaps the most prominent horse to run with an entrapped epiglottis was Alysheba in the run-up to the 1987 Kentucky Derby. Alysheba’s problem was discovered after he finished second in the San Felipe Stakes on March 22 of that year. At the time, the surgery to fix the problem had rarely been tried. But the fix worked and Alysheba recovered in time to run another prep, the Blue Grass Stakes, before going on to with both the Derby and the Preakness.

Mandella said the Triple Crown races would be off the table for Omaha Beach because he would definitely be out of training at least two weeks even with a successful surgery.

“Having not run and try train up to it with two weeks off wouldn’t be fair to the horse,” he said. “I wouldn’t try to put him through that.”

Mandella said he’s never had a horse that combined both the talent and kindness that Omaha Beach has.

“He is a special horse,” he said. “You watch him out there on the racetrack, he was galloping one day and I gigged somebody, I think it was Mike Smith, I said, ‘that looks like Muhammad Ali when he’d go into the ring.’ He’d just bounce and hardly touch the ground. ‘Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.’”

After seeing how he recovers, Omaha Beach will most likely be pointed to the fall season with the Breeders’ Cup Classic as the primary target.

Haikal questionable

Haikal, the Shadwell Stable 30-1 shot trained by Kiaran McLaughlin of Lexington, has developed an abscess on his left front and was kept off the track Thursday.

The foot has had the shoe removed and is being soaked and iced. McLaughlin said if Haikal couldn’t train Friday morning, he would scratch. He’s set to come out of post No. 11 Saturday. There are no other also-eligibles who could take his place.

“It’s just terrible timing,” McLaughlin said. “It’s a situation that will correct itself and is similar to Omaha Beach. You feel bad for the connections. Just bad timing — that’s all. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

Kentucky Derby field with updated odds

Updated morning-line odds for the Kentucky Derby were announced Wednesday night by Churchill Downs oddsmaker Mike Battaglia:

1. War of Will (15-1)

2. Tax (20-1)

3. By My Standards (15-1)

4. Gray Magician (50-1)

5. Improbable (5-1)

6. Vekoma (15-1)

7. Maximum Security (8-1)

8. Tacitus (8-1)

9. Plus Que Parfait (30-1)

10. Cutting Humor (30-1)

11. Haikal (30-1)

12. Omaha Beach (Scratched)

13. Code of Honor (12-1)

14. Win Win Win (12-1)

15. Master Fencer (50-1)

16. Game Winner (9-2)

17. Roadster (5-1)

18. Long Range Toddy (30-1)

19. Spinoff (30-1)

20. Country House (30-1)

21. Bodexpress (30-1)

This story was originally published May 2, 2019 at 10:13 AM.