Beholder Alert, 'Back in the Game'
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Photo: Anne M. Eberhardt
Beholder and trainer Richard Mandella at Keeneland Oct. 21.
Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella had good news for Beholder fans the morning of Oct. 21—the champion racemare is "back in the game."
The day after her Oct. 19 arrival at Keeneland from Southern California for a run in the Oct. 31 Breeders' Cup Classic (gr. I), the Spendthrift Farm runner missed training after spiking a minor temperature of 101.3 degrees, just slightly above her usual 100.3 degrees. The rise was cause for concern given her history—the winner of the 2012 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies (gr. I) and 2013 Breeders' Cup Distaff (gr. I) missed the Distaff last year due to a fever and lung infection.
This time, however, tests came back with encouraging results—just a slightly elevated white blood count from the stress of shipping—and after being treated with antibiotics, the 5-year-old racemare was bright and alert with her temperature back to normal again.
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"She looks great this morning," Mandella said. "You know how she was yesterday; she had a temperature, she was depressed, her blood showed some stress-inflamation, a reaction from shipping, but those signs are all the same signs of pneumonia, which is a little scary.
"Consequently, once she was treated with fever medicine—and she is on antibiotics for a couple of days—once we did that, she started feeling much better."
Mandella said a final lung scan would be completed on Beholder at 9 a.m., and that she likely could tack-walk the shedrow the afternoon of Oct. 21.
"It's a possibility," he said of her going to the track Oct. 22 or 23. "Either tomorrow or the next day."
Beholder is a two-time Eclipse Award winner who this season has run through five races undefeated, including an 8 1/4-length romp against the boys in the Aug. 22 $1 Million TVG Pacific Classic (gr. I), and she carries a six-race win streak dating back to last September into the Breeders' Cup.
Later in the morning, Beholder enjoyed grazing with Mandella on the shank, and inquisitively took in her new surroundings with an eye on several horses training on the track.