Flightline's White Spots a Faint Reminder of Incident

Sharp-eyed observers who lay eyes on Flightline  for the first time this week in Lexington may notice the L-shaped scar on the colt's right hindquarters, a lingering reminder of an unfortunate encounter with a stall latch in February of his 2-year-old season.

While that scar has been a noted part of Flightline's story, a white patch of hair on his neck also drew questions after the Longines Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) contender shipped in from California. Was he born with it? Did he have a rash?  

David Ingordo of Lane's End Bloodstock cleared up the questions.

"The white hairs are from where he had a port placed to get antibiotics in (after the stall latch incident)," Ingordo said. "I unfortunately was there that day, coincidentally. He was getting ready to go out and breeze and he was getting tacked up. Something startled him and he just went right back and hit the stall latch. And the way he did it—the force he did it with—it was not pretty.

"He went to the clinic and we put him back together and sewed him up...It took about 90 days to heal."

Dr. Rhonda Rathgeber, a partner with Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Lexington, explained the hair condition, known as Leukotrichia.  

"Leukotrichia is a fancy word for white hairs," Rathgeber said. "When normal hair grows, the pigment or color is produced by cells in the hair follicle and transferred to the hair shaft as it grows. When there is trauma to the hair follicle, the pigment is not transferred and the hair will become white."

Fortunately the white hairs are now just lingering evidence of an incident long in the past for the undefeated son of Tapit  .

"It was just a setback that happened, an inconvenience at the time," Ingordo said.