Justify ends Derby curse
Chestnut colt the first winner to not race as juvenile in 136 years
Favorite Justify becomes the first horse since 1882 to win the Kentucky Derby without having raced as a 2-year-old.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — All week long, it was question after question being fired at Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert outside his barn on the Churchill Downs backstretch. Baffert had what most people who follow this sport thought was the best horse in the 144th running of the Kentucky Derby.
Justify, the big, strapping chestnut colt, had too much going against him as he closed on his date with America’s most famous horse race. And that’s what brought questions.
He had won his first three starts, but was that going to be enough to get through the roughand-tumble rodeo called the Kentucky Derby? He had never run as a 2-year-old and that was a big Derby no-no because no horse since Apollo had won this race without running as a juvenile. And that was way back in 1882.
Yes, this colt was fast. He was so athletic that Baffert got to calling him a franchise player, a la LeBron James. But could he overcome Derby traditions that had not been overcome in the last 136 years?
Justify got his chance to run with the big dogs on Saturday, and he disappointed no one. Ridden by Mike Smith, Justify sloshed home to an impressive 2½ length win over a sloppy race track in front of 157,813 waterlogged fans at Churchill Downs. That’s the eighth largest crowd in the history of the storied race.
That gives Justify a perfect record in four starts. His total margin of victory is an eye-popping 21½ lengths.
“This horse is a super horse,” Baffert said. “I am so lucky and blessed to have him.”
Justify is the sixth straight favorite to win the Derby; he went off at odds of 5-2 on Saturday. This was also the fourth time in the last 10 years that the Derby was run over a sloppy track. Since 1925, it’s just the eighth time the race was held on a sea of goo.
It didn’t bother Justify at all. Baffert had said all week that the biggest concern he had with the horse was not the curse of Apollo but the start of the race.
Just get out of the gate cleanly and the horse would take care of the rest.
The last thing Baffert wanted to see was the horse break a step slow and then get trapped behind a wall of horses. That would have been instant defeat in the trainer’s eyes.
“We had to get out of the gate, or we were going to be heading out of the back gate,” Baffert said. “With the way the weather was, I was preparing for a loss.”
Nonsense. Justify just kept rolling along. Even when the early fractions, set by Promised Fulfilled were quick ones, Justify never flinched.
The first quarter mile went in 22.24 seconds and there was no breather in the half mile that went in 45.77. Justify just sat off that and, when Promises Fulfilled had enough, he roared to the lead.
And kept on going. When he barreled into the stretch, the Chad Brown-trained Good Magic made a run at Justify but could not get by. The two horses splashed down the stretch but Smith and Justify kept on going.
“I couldn’t get by him,” Jose Ortiz, who rode Good Magic, said with a shrug as he headed back to the jockey’s room.
At the end, Justify was timed in 2:04.20.
“I knew if I got him out out of there (gate) he could go fast,” Smith said. “I kind of had a sigh of relief when he got out and I said, ‘OK, you can do it from here.”
That’s what Justify did. He gave Baffert his fifth Derby win, the first since American Pharoah in 2015. For Smith, it was his second Derby, the first came with long shot Giacomo in 2005.
Good Magic, who went off at 9-1, just held on for second as he was a head in front of the Todd Pletcher-trained Audible. It was another 1¾ lengths back to Instilled Regard, who finished fourth as the highest priced horse in the field at 85-1.
Mendelssohn, who was attempting to be the first European horse to win the Derby and went off at 6-1, was never a factor and finished last.