DEL MAR, Calif. – Christoper Head never wanted to become a jockey. Not interested when he was young enough for an early start, not the right weight when he might’ve gotten interested. In his early 20s, he studied computing and languages. That came at the urging of his father. The algorithm generating his family history pushed him away from computers. The Heads are coded to work with horses. Christopher Head never wanted to become a jockey. He answers that question rapid-fire, ready to dismiss it. He did not want to walk along the path trod by his father. Freddy Head became a champion French jockey, retired from that, turned to training. Freddy encouraged his offspring to spread their wings and fly into the wider world. Hooves, manes, the warm smell of a chestnut coat – horses pulled the younger Head back. In France, the name Head denotes horse. Four members of the family have won France’s most important race, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, beginning with William Head, Christopher’s great grandfather. William’s son Alec trained four Arc winners. Alec’s daughter Criquette won three, and Freddy rode four Arc winners. :: BREEDERS’ CUP MILE: See DRF’s special section with top contenders, odds, comments, news, and more Freddy Head never trained an Arc winner. His greatest success training came in America, where Goldikova won the Breeders’ Cup Mile three years in a row, an unmatched Breeders’ Cup feat. Head also won the Mile twice as the jockey of the mare Miesque. When Christopher Head became a head trainer himself, in 2018, he said he was determined to be his own man, his own trainer. The 38-year-old worked a decade for Freddy. He wanted to escape that shadow, to be seen as a trainer who earned whatever he got through competence and success, not his name. That he has done. And still Head’s first starter in a Breeders’ Cup race, first runner in North America, comes in the Breeders’ Cup Mile. Like Freddy Head’s milers at the Breeders’ Cup, his son has brought a filly, the 3-year-old Ramatuelle. And if all goes according to plan, she can provide the Head family their sixth BC Mile winner. Ramatuelle comes to Del Mar after winning the Prix de la Foret on the Arc undercard at Longchamp, a race Goldikova twice used as a springboard to Mile wins. Her path from the start of her campaign to the end of it shows how Christopher Head has walked his own path. Goldikova won two starts against modest competition at age 2, then had the misfortune of running into the great Zarkava in the French 1000 Guineas and the French Oaks. While Zarkava moved into races at longer distances, Goldikova ruled the French mile division, beating fillies in the Group 1 Prix Rothschild and males in the Group 1 Prix du Moulin. When she showed up at Santa Anita and won her first Mile, it came in her seventh start of the year. Ramatuelle, a Kentucky-bred by Justify, had a busier 2-year-old season than her predecessor. She raced five times, culminating with a narrow loss over soft ground in the Group 1 Prix Morny. This campaign resembled the one engineered by Head one year earlier with Blue Rose Cen, who won the Group 1 Prix Marcel-Boussac in the sixth start of her 2-year-old season, then went on to give Head his first and second Classic wins in the 1000 Guineas and the French Oaks. Her season ended with a victory in the Group 1 Prix de l’Opera. A few weeks later, Head sent Big Rock to a smashing win in the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot. Ramatuelle made her 3-year-old debut in the Prix Impudence, finishing second on heavy ground. The race merely prepped her for the 1000 Guineas at Newmarket in England. Head, unlike most French horsemen, generally trains his horses to go forward, to use their natural speed. Jockey Aurelien Lemaitre might have used too much of it in the Guineas, a duel on a fast pace compromising Ramatuelle’s finish just enough to allow longshot Elmalka and the very good Porta Fortuna to blitz her at the wire. Ramatuelle returned to England the next month and employed a far different style, closing from the back of the Group 1 Coronation Stakes field to nab third. What followed was nothing like Goldikova’s 3-year-old summer. Instead of racing, Ramatuelle refreshed. The Foret on Oct. 6 was her first start since the June 21 Coronation. :: Get the inside scoop from the morning workouts with Breeders' Cup Clocker Reports from Mike Welsch and the DRF Clocker Team When Head decided to work for Freddy, he started at the bottom. He said he wanted to learn every job in the stable, so that when he became a trainer, he could speak from experience to the people who worked for him. He also went to work for his aunt, Criquette, and spent time with a French steeplechase trainer, trying to absorb diverse methods of training a racehorse. Head also has brought to bear his technology-leaning background: His horses train in the fields and forests with a GPS strapped to their equipment, recording times, collecting data. Head does long-term planning, picking a major goal, pondering the best way to get there. For Ramatuelle, that meant respecting her two hard races in late spring and early summer, circling the Foret and the BC Mile. Her Foret, run over a very soft course likely less than ideal for the filly, was an eye-opener. Ramatuelle blasted from midpack to the lead with a Goldikova-esque burst. A chestnut of modest size, Ramatuelle bounces light on her feet, an athletic filly Head believes will thrive on a small American oval. He thinks she will be a better horse at age 4, though her future with him might be uncertain, as Ramatuelle is cataloged in the prestigious Fasig-Tipton November sale shortly after the Breeders’ Cup. A partnership that includes former San Antonio Spurs star point guard Tony Parker campaigns Ramatuelle, who was bred by Leopoldo Fernandez Pujals’s Yeguada Centurion. It was Pujals who provided Head with his first two Group 1 winners, Blue Rose Cen and Big Rock. This past April, in a move that shocked many, Pujals transferred those horses and about 20 others to another trainer in Chantilly, where Head also trains. That has not gone well for Blue Rose Cen, a hapless shadow this year of the horse she’d been the last two seasons. Head has rebounded, Ramatuelle now the stable star. Besides his apprenticeships in France, Head worked a few months in California with trainer Julio Canani, himself a two-time winner of the Mile. He did not come here with Goldikova. While she was winning Breeders’ Cups, Head stayed home overseeing his father’s training yard. But Head knew Goldikova well, from her brilliance in racing to her strong, territorial protection of her stall space, a tough mare. Ramatuelle seems cut from similar cloth. “She’s a bit keen like this, too. She can me male-ish. I think that’s what fillies who can be really good do,” Head said. “It’s a pleasure to see her and how she behaves in the travel and everything. She’s beautiful. She didn’t lose anything regarding her weight coming here. She’s really, really ready for this race.” Christopher Head never wanted to become a jockey like his father. He said his father, while always willing to provide advice if asked, has kept a respectful distance during the son’s rise as a trainer. “I didn’t want to be like a copycat of something that happened before, and my family has already been huge throughout all the generations. In a certain way, I wanted to be different. I have the feeling that people don’t think my father is behind it anymore,” Head said. Five Breeders’ Cup Miles in the Head family lie behind Christopher Head’s chance this week for a sixth. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.