Country House getting diagnostic tests, will miss Belmont

Kentucky Derby winner Country House has been sent to the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital near Lexington, Ky., to get a full workup after becoming ill earlier this week and being taken out of consideration for the Preakness Stakes, and will now certainly bypass the Belmont Stakes as well, his trainer, Bill Mott, said Friday.

“We sent him to the clinic to get thoroughly checked out,” Mott said. “He’ll have a tracheal wash, they’ll make sure he’s being treated with the proper antibiotics, make sure whatever bacteria is in there is being properly dealt with. He seems to be responding well. It’s not an emergency. We just wanted to get him over there and get him examined.”

Mott said Country House will focus on a summer and fall campaign once he’s ready to go back into training.

“My gut feeling was that he wasn’t going to make the Belmont, and now we know to put that out of our mind,” Mott said.

“He’s going to miss a week or two weeks of training, and even if you put him back in training right away, it’s a rush, and we don’t have to rush. He’s a May foal. He’s accomplished a lot. There’s a lot of nice races the second half of the season.”

Country House had a cough Tuesday and Mott, trusting his more than 50 years of being around racehorses, realized he had on his hands a horse who was showing signs of getting ill.

“His bloodwork wasn’t completely normal,” Mott said.

The decision to go to Rood and Riddle was made “to get everything checked out thoroughly, make sure we know we’re treating him with the right antibiotics,” Mott said.

“Without all the lab work that you can get done at a clinic, you can be guessing, and we don’t want to guess,” Mott said. “He can stay there and get round-the-clock care if he needs it.”

Country House crossed the wire second in the Derby but was placed first on the disqualification of Maximum Security. He had remained at Churchill Downs until going to Rood and Riddle on Friday morning. Mott said once Country House gets out of Rood and Riddle the likely plan would be for him to return to Churchill Downs and, as he put it, “rest there.”