Healthy again, assistant relishes role with Justify

Baffert’s longtime aide can run show

Block News Alliance

ELMONT, N.Y. — When there’s a Triple Crown hopeful in the Bob Baffert barn, it’s a little like this: Baffert comes and goes. Jimmy Barnes is forever.

The longtime assistant trainer always is there, on the ground, on his pony, on the radio, on the phone. He was there on crutches at the Breeders’ Cup in 2017 after taking a spill from his horse and suffering a broken pelvis in September.

He has been there since 1999, and his wife, Dana, has been there longer as an exercise rider for Baffert since 1997.

When Baffert had a heart attack in Dubai in 2012, Barnes was there to take the reins and kept the operation going. When Barnes was slowed in the fall, it wasn’t for long.

“I went [to the hospital] to see him and he’s laying there, and he says, ‘Man, I feel like I let you down,’” Baffert said. “That’s the way Jimmy is.”

If it seems like Barnes works all the time, it’s only because he does. Up and to the barn at 4:30. Leave around noon. Come back later in the afternoon. On a race day, stay all day sometimes. He travels, New Mexico to California to Arkansas to Kentucky to wherever.

And with Justify, like American Pharoah, Barnes is a near-constant presence, serving as Baffert’s eyes, ears, hands and heartbeat when Baffert is away while minding the rest of his operation.

His experience with highend horses and his knowledge of Baffert and his way of doing things is difficult to duplicate; its value is impossible to estimate.

“He makes my job so much easier,” Baffert said. “I’ve got to be concentrating on all these horses, where they’re going to run, dealing with the ownership, buying horses. So, when he’s back here with the horse, I don’t have to worry about it. He knows what he has to do. He knows the way I think.

“I’m running a big operation in California, and we’ll talk, he’ll shoot me a text, ‘How do you want to handle this?’ We’ve been through so many situations that he knows, ‘OK, this is what we have to do.’ He just knows. He’s been around these good horses. We’ve been around these good horses, and we’ve learned from these good horses.”

Baffert is often on such pins and needles during a Triple Crown chase that he cringes when he sees Barnes’ number pop up on his phone. The first words Barnes has to say are, “Everything’s good.”

“My job,” Barnes said, “is to keep the horse happy.”

Barnes is in constant motion. If there’s nothing to do around the barn, he’ll find something. You put a guy like that in a hospital bed and tell him he can’t do anything for six weeks, it doesn’t go over very well. In September, it didn’t. Barnes had to find a way to stay involved. From his convalescence in California, he monitored Baffert’s stable via webcam video.

“It took me a solid six months until I really felt comfortable,” Barnes said.

In the interim, Barnes took on other roles.

“He couldn’t stay away,” Baffert said. “. . . I went and bought him a really cherry golf cart, and I had it all tricked out for him, and we called him the electric horseman. He loves that cart.”

Taken off of his pony for a time, Barnes got involved timing workouts, watching them with Baffert.

“I was ready to get back to the barn after a month, even on crutches,” Barnes said. “I was basically dispatching, telling Bob when the workers were coming out.”