What Is a Vet Scratch? How Breeders' Cup Horses Get Checked

Breeders' Cup week is underway at Keeneland (Oct. 30-31, 2026), and every horse in the 14 championship races is being examined again and again before it reaches the starting gate. If you've wondered what is a vet scratch, why it can happen on race morning and why it sparks so much argument, this guide explains it in plain terms.

What is a vet scratch?

A vet scratch is when a regulatory veterinarian, a vet who works for the racing authority rather than for the owner, removes a horse from a race because it doesn't look fit to run safely. The usual reason is soundness: the horse looks lame or uneven when it jogs, or an exam turns up something that worries the vet.

It's different from a scratch the trainer or owner chooses. Here's the quick comparison:

The key point: once a regulatory vet scratches a horse, the trainer and owner can't overrule the call that day. The horse is out of that race.

Who makes the call at the Breeders' Cup

Three groups of vets look at a Breeders' Cup horse, and each one has a different job.

• The attending vet. This is the horse's own private vet, hired by the trainer. After entries close, they must examine the horse and declare it sound to race, and that exam has to be logged in the horse's HISA medical record.
• The Breeders' Cup veterinary team. It's led by Dr. William Farmer and Dr. Deborah Lamparter. The team reviews every possible starter's history and examines the horses in person.
• The host regulatory vets. In Kentucky that's the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation's team. Its equine medical director is Dr. George Mundy.

The Breeders' Cup team and the Kentucky regulatory vets do the daily inspections together. A horse that raises concern goes on a watch list, and a group of vets follows it until it's either cleared to run or scratched.

How Breeders' Cup horses are checked in 2026

The Breeders' Cup vet check starts long before race week. Here's the 2026 timeline from the official Pre-Entry Guide, Veterinary Guide and training schedule:

1. July through October: pre-screening. The panel reviews training patterns, past performances, medical records and time spent on any vets' list. If something looks off, it can ask the regulatory vet at the horse's home track to do an exam or call for advanced imaging. The Breeders' Cup pays for those extra steps for pre-entered horses.
2. Oct. 19: pre-entries close. Exams begin on every pre-entered horse at tracks around the country.
3. Oct. 23-31: mandatory jog-up exams at Keeneland. Every Breeders' Cup runner must jog past the vets each day it enters the racetrack to train, according to the official training schedule.
4. Oct. 26: entries close. Every entrant needed an entry exam between Oct. 26 and 28, which a private vet can perform.
5. Oct. 28, 11 a.m. ET: the attending vet's exam had to be recorded in the horse's HISA record.
6. All week: daily inspections on the track under a rider and in hand in the barn area. Each entrant gets at least one stall-side exam from the Breeders' Cup team, which is a physical exam plus a jog in hand. The panel can ask for more exams or diagnostics, including advanced imaging such as a PET scan.
7. Race morning, 8 a.m. ET: scratch time for both Friday and Saturday. It's set that late on purpose, to give each horse as much time as possible to show it's sound.

What a jog in hand looks like

A handler trots the horse on a lead rope in a straight line on firm ground, away from the vets and back. The vets watch for a bobbing head, a hiking hip or one stride shorter than the other.

Trainers of horses with an unusual way of going are asked to tell the vet team ahead of time, so a quirk isn't mistaken for lameness. This year the vets also use Sleip, a phone app that measures uneven movement on video.

What a PET scan can show in a racehorse

PET stands for positron emission tomography. The horse is given a radioactive tracer, and the areas of bone that are working hardest to remodel or repair take up more of it and show up on the image.

What makes a PET scan useful for racehorses:

• It shows activity, not just shape. It can reveal abnormal bone activity that may signal an early injury, sometimes before it shows up on X-rays, CT or MRI.
• It pinpoints the spot. The resolution is good enough to show which part of a bone is involved.
• The horse can stay standing. Newer scanners built for racehorses work with the horse lightly sedated, without general anesthesia.
• It suits the fetlock. Standing racehorse PET was developed with the fetlock in mind. That joint (see our anatomy guide) is a key site of concern for serious leg injuries, and Kentucky's chief regulatory vet, Dr. George Mundy, told the Paulick Report the underlying concern is bone stress injury.

What it can't do:

• A bright spot isn't a diagnosis on its own. Bone in hard training is always remodeling, so vets read the scan together with the jog, the exam and the horse's history.
• No scan can promise that a horse won't get hurt. It's one more piece of evidence, not a crystal ball.

What happens after a vet scratch

To the horse

A horse scratched for unsoundness goes on the vets' list. To come off it, the horse has to pass another exam and usually a workout watched by a regulatory vet.

The new Kentucky numbers show it's not always quick:

• In 2026, Kentucky recorded 514 vets'-list clearance workout attempts at six meets, and 115 of them (22.4%) failed. Most failures were found after the workout, not in the exam before it.
• Of 445 regulatory unsoundness scratches at Kentucky's nine Thoroughbred meets in 2025, 20.9% involved horses that had not raced again by mid-October 2026, compared with 3.7% of the winners of those same races.
• Horses that did come back took an average of 108.2 days to make their next start, compared with 52.2 days for the race winners.

The records can't show why a horse stopped racing; some may have retired for other reasons. For what happens to injured racehorses, see our story on HISA's Equine Recovery Foundation.

To the race and the also-eligibles

Every Breeders' Cup race can take also-eligibles, a ranked waiting list of horses outside the field limit. At the Breeders' Cup, an also-eligible draws in only if a horse in the main field scratches before scratch time, 8 a.m. ET on race day. Our post position draw guide lists them race by race.

A vet scratch after scratch time, even minutes before the race, simply leaves the field one horse short.

To bets

In the U.S., a win, place or show bet on a scratched horse is generally refunded. Multi-race bets follow each track's posted rules, which can mean a refund, a consolation payout or a switch to the post-time favorite. This explains the rules; it isn't betting advice.

The debate: horse welfare vs. access to the race

What Kentucky's data says

On Oct. 27, 2026 the Paulick Report published an analysis by Chelsea Hackbarth comparing six Kentucky meets in 2025 and 2026:

• The regulatory vet scratch rate rose from 3.02% to 3.45%.
• Reported race injuries plus post-race and test-barn lameness findings fell from 1.44 to 1.21 per 100 starts.
• Claims voided for vet reasons fell from 11.0% to 8.6% of claims.
• Musculoskeletal racing fatalities were down by two, but the rate rose slightly from 1.30 to 1.39 per 1,000 starts because there were fewer starts.

The report stresses that these trends can't prove that the scratches caused the improvement. A University of Kentucky study funded by the Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council is being developed to image the fetlocks of horses scratched before races and horses whose claims were voided for unsoundness after racing.

The case for more caution

• A horse can't tell anyone it's sore. A missed race is recoverable, while a breakdown can end its life and endanger the jockey.
• Fewer post-race lameness findings point in a hopeful direction, even if they don't prove cause.

The case owners and trainers make

• A Breeders' Cup start can be a once-in-a-career chance, and fees are steep. The Classic alone costs $75,000 to pre-enter and another $75,000 to enter.
• They say the calls can be inconsistent, especially for horses with unusual gaits, and that a scratch can follow a horse into later races. In Kentucky, scratched horses that came back in claiming races were more likely to drop at least 25% in price (46.3%) than trainer-scratched horses (33.3%).
• Some take it to court. In April 2026 the owners of White Abarrio sued the Breeders' Cup, the California Horse Racing Board and Del Mar over his scratch minutes before the 2025 Dirt Mile at Del Mar, Horse Racing Nation reported. The owners say he had passed his daily exams. The Breeders' Cup said it doesn't comment on pending litigation, and Del Mar said it would present its defense at the appropriate time. The case is pending.

Both sides want sound horses on the track. They disagree about who should decide, how close to the race, and with what evidence.

What to watch next

• Oct. 30, 8 a.m. ET: scratch time for Friday's races. Check the official scratch list and whether a scratch is marked as a vet scratch.
• Oct. 31, 8 a.m. ET: scratch time for Saturday, including the Classic. Our Breeders' Cup 2026 hub has post times and TV.
• After the races: post-race exams continue. If a horse goes wrong during a race, our guide to what happens when a horse falls explains the response.
• Coming months: the University of Kentucky fetlock study, and the one-year follow-up measures Kentucky's regulators say they're developing. The White Abarrio lawsuit is also still pending.

Lessons for any horse owner

1. Film your horse jogging on firm ground while it's sound, so you know its normal.
2. Keep vet records and X-rays in one place.
3. Tell any new vet about quirks in how your horse moves.
4. If your horse looks off, stop work and call your vet.

Our health basics section covers daily checks, and the glossary explains racing terms.