The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Santa Anita
Cup Classic at Keeneland, in Kentucky, on Nov. 5, 2022.
Last year was the first since 2013 that Sadler’s stable failed to produce a Grade I victory.
Having to get over the retirement of one of American racing’s all-time greats is a high-class problem to which few trainers can relate. Another at Santa Anita these days is Baffert, who trained Triple Crown winners American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018. Baffert said this week it was “sort of depressing” when Justify was retired — unbeaten in six starts, like Flightline — as a 3-year-old.
Baffert said he talked with Sadler about it when Flightline went to stud, and told him: “Man, you don’t know what you’re going to go through.”
“Everybody’s talking about your horse, (it’s) constant excitement, you’re there,” Baffert said this week. “Then, all of a sudden,
he’s retired and he’s gone, and you’re back to … (trying to) find another one.”
That search for the next one is why Sadler, a 67-yearold Long Beach native, said no when friends asked if we would retire when Flightline did.
“There’s probably not a second Flightline in anybody’s lifetime,” Sadler said. “But my focus is still getting nice horses and winning big races.
“Fortunately I’ve got good clients and I’ve got good stock coming into the barn.”
Sadler calls Subsanador and Scatify “interesting horses.”
Subsanador, a Group 1-level winner in Argentina, was bet down to 1310 odds in his U.S. debut Dec. 26 but finished fourth in the San Antonio. Hector Berrios will ride Subsanador in Sunday’s 1¼-mile Big ‘Cap as Flavien Prat moves to Salesman.
“He didn’t really get a good trip. He was kind of in between horses. So it wasn’t quite the race we were expecting
the first time out,” said Sadler, who is looking for his fourth Santa Anita Handicap win. “He’s trained much better than it went last time, so hopefully he can run to his works.”
Scatify, a son of Justify, broke his maiden first time out at Los Alamitos and then faded to third behind the dominant Nysos in the Feb. 3 Robert Lewis Stakes. Berrios will ride him again in the 1 1/16-mile race.
Scatify missed some training because of wet weather before the Lewis.
“So he was a little short (on condition), got a little tired,” Sadler said. “I think if he hadn’t missed the training, he definitely would have been a good second.
“He wasn’t going to beat the winner.”
The Baffert runners in the San Felipe are challenged only by Scatify and John Shirreffs-trained Mc Vay in what has become a four-horse race with the scratch of Nysos. Baffert said Saturday morning he’d been “on the fence” about running Nysos but decided
the top-ranked U.S. 3-yearold didn’t need this race as much as his other two entrants.
With Baffert 3-year-olds ineligible for the May 4 Kentucky Derby because of ongoing sanctions by Churchill Downs, Scatify and Mc Vay are the ones chasing the 50, 25, 15 and 10 Derby qualifying points allotted by finishing position. Scatify has six points, Mc Vay four, going in; it normally takes 40-plus to get into the 20-horse Derby.
The final Derby points race at Santa Anita will be the Santa Anita Derby, worth 100 points to the winner.
“He (Scatify) is a nice horse. He can run. Hopefully he can keep improving,” Sadler said. “It’s still a wide-open year (for Derby prospects).”
That’s enough to motivate a trainer looking for the next star.
“It’s fun to develop young horses into whatever they can develop into,” Sadler said. “I really feel like I’m in good shape, and I’ll go forward.”