Omaha Beach made the 7-5 favorite to capture the Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park

It’s been almost nine months, but for thoroughbred trainer Richard Mandella, it still stings. Three days before last year’s Kentucky Derby, his Omaha Beach — the favorite to win the Run for the Roses — had to be scratched out of the race when the colt was found to have a breathing problem.

Lungs, you see, are as important to a horse as its legs.

“As a trainer in this business, you learn to take your lumps,” Mandella said. “But that was a pretty big lump. I thought he was a Triple Crown winner. I thought he was strong enough to win the Kentucky Derby.”

Instead, Omaha Beach never reached the starting gate.

Winning the Pegasus World Cup on Saturday at Gulfstream Park won’t make up for the racing fame Omaha Beach would have achieved by hitting the wire first in the Derby. But with its $3 million purse, it will add a nice feather to the unfortunate career of a now-healthy horse making his final racing start before heading off to stud duty.

“I’m just glad to be here,” Mandella said Wednesday after Omaha Beach was made the 7-5 favorite in the field of 12 for the 1 1/8-mile Pegasus, the richest race in Florida.

Mike Smith is scheduled to ride Omaha Beach.

Omaha Beach enters the Pegasus having won two of races in impressive style since undergoing corrective surgery to repair an entrapped epiglottis, which made breathing difficult. Ironically, the horse looming as his greatest threat in the Pegasus — Spun to Run — also had his 2019 racing season interrupted due to the same breathing ailment.

And, like Omaha Beach, Spun to Run is every bit as formidable now as he was before.

Spun to Run handed Omaha Beach his only post-operation defeat in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile in November at Santa Anita.

“Omaha Beach is getting all the hype,” said Spun to Run’s trainer, Juan Carlos Guerrero. “But I’m okay with that. I don’t see why we can’t beat him again.”

The field for the Pegasus contains no top-three finishers in last year’s Triple Crown series. Tax (12-1) came closest by finishing fourth in the Belmont Stakes.

If not for Omaha Beach’s breathing setback at the 11th hour, the storyline might have turned out differently.

Omaha Beach entered the Derby off three consecutive wins, including the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. The distant third-place finisher in that Arkansas race, Country House, would go on to run second in the Kentucky Derby but placed first by stewards with the disqualification of Maximum Security.

All Mandella could do was sit and wonder.

“What can you do?” Mandella asked. “If you’re going to train horses, you better put your seatbelt on. There are going to be rough bumps.”

None, though, was rougher than missing out on the Derby. At the time, Mandella even joked that his wife had to talk him off a ledge. He was that upset.

“She tied one of my legs down to the bed so I couldn’t jump out the hotel window,” Mandella joked back then.

Omaha Beach missed three months of racing -- and the entire Triple Crown series -- as he recovered from throat surgery. Upon his return in October, he won the Grade I Santa Anita Sprint Championship, lost the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile by nearly three lengths to Spun to Run, and then won the Grade I Malibu.

In the process, Mandella said Omaha Beach has developed a following.

“He’s been more popular than I could have ever imagined,” Mandella said. “I think he projects something that people truly love. His personality. His looks. His style when he runs. He’s such a good horse.”

▪ Saturday’s 12-race card also includes the $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational. Magic Wand is the 7-2 program favorite in the field of 12 for the 1 3/16-mile grass stakes.

▪ First-race post Saturday is 11:30 a.m. The card includes seven stakes in addition to the two World Cup races.