LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Polydream was scratched lame Friday morning from the Breeders’ Cup Mile by state veterinarians to the great consternation of five-time Breeders’ Cup winner Freddie Head.

Head insisted both publicly and to state and Breeders’ Cup veterinarians that Polydream was moving the same way she always does and that nothing was amiss with the filly, the morning-line favorite for the Mile.

“It’s a disgrace,” Head said later Friday morning. “You think I’m taking a horse to America that’s not ready to run?”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Polydream, the morning-line favorite for Saturday’s $2 million Mile, and Code of Honor, the third choice for Friday’s $2 million Juvenile, were among the key scratches out of the Breeders’ Cup races, it was announced Friday morning.

Polydream, 5-1 on the morning line, was scratched out of the Mile by the Breeders’ Cup examining veterinarians, who deemed the 3-year-old Irish-bred filly lame Friday morning.

Trainer Freddie Head disagreed with that assessment and said Polydream was fit and ready to run.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Hofburg will not push onward to the Clark Handicap in the wake of his disappointing effort in the Fayette Stakes last Saturday and will instead get time off before rejoining trainer Bill Mott at Payson Park in Florida ahead of a 4-year-old campaign.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Although Bucchero may not have needed a confidence boost earlier this fall to prepare for the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint Saturday at Churchill Downs, trainer Tim Glyshaw did. Frustrated by what he considered several unlucky trips with Bucchero, he was feeling snakebit.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A little after 9:30 Thursday morning one of the best racehorses in the world, Enable, walked across the Churchill Downs main track and onto the grass course – and went squish.

Rain was falling onto the filly’s back and onto the blue coat and helmet of her rider, jockey Frankie Dettori.

Jay Privman, Daily Racing Form’s national correspondent, was announced the winner of both the 2017 Joe Hirsch Award for outstanding newspaper writing and the 2017 Bill Leggett Award for outstanding feature writing. The awards were announced at Wednesday’s annual National Thoroughbred Writers and Broadcasters dinner, during which DRF’s Midwest correspondent Marty McGee was honored with the prestigious Walter Haight Award for career excellence in turf writing.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Mendelssohn’s last-place finish in the Kentucky Derby spurred trainer Aidan O’Brien to “change the system” when it came to preparing the 3-year-old for Saturday’s $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs.

So far, O’Brien believes the plan has worked. Saturday could provide the proof.

“We would feel he’s probably in a better place now than he was going to Kentucky,” O’Brien, referring to the Derby, said Thursday at Churchill Downs. “He’s had more experience, and he knows what’s expected. We’re looking forward to it, really.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Under normal circumstances, the weather would have been the main story Thursday at Churchill Downs, where the rain, which began Wednesday afternoon, continued to fall throughout training hours, leaving the main track a sea of slop and the turf course soft and boggy one day before the two-day Breeders’ Cup begins.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A couple of years ago, trainer John Sadler took a trip to Spain. When he got back he had a wall calendar affixed above the desk in his barn that had as its featured photo one month the Sagrada Familia, the famous church in Barcelona that was designed by the great architect Antoni Gaudi in the 1880s and which, to this day, though a major tourist attraction, remains unfinished.

That building is a metaphor for Sadler’s career.

It’s remarkable, really, how well the European shippers handle traveling to an American racetrack for the Breeders’ Cup. Things are just so much different for them here. At home they do not live at the track, only travelling there and back the day they race. Training takes place at a relaxed rhythm, often out in fields, through forest paths, over hill and dale – not out on a crowded dirt oval filled with strange horses.