The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Santa Anita
For Baffert, the only concerning moments came as the field entered the first turn, when Scatify shifted off the rail and knocked Imagination “sideways,” as the Equibase chart footnotes put it.
“The one horse came (out) on Imagination, it scared him, and he took off with (Dettori),” Baffert said in the winner’s circle.
Said Dettori: “My horse, I took him back to get him wide to get him to relax and get him back into the race. He fought a great duel. He was full of heart.”
A stewards’ inquiry into the first-turn drama resulted in no change.
For the horses vying for Kentucky Derby qualifying points, John Shirreffs-trained Mc Vay picked up 15 for finishing third and John Sadlertrained Scatify 10 for finishing fourth. Mc Vay now has 19 for the season, placing him in a tie for 17th in the scramble for 20 starting spots in the May 4 Derby. Scatify has 16, which puts him 21st.
If either continues on the Derby trail, he’ll need a good run in the April 6 Santa Anita Derby or another of the major preps worth 100, 50, 25, 15 and 10 points to top-five finishers. It usually takes 40 or more points to get into the Derby.
On a surface rated fast — but dulled by the rain that forced this card to be postponed from Saturday to Sunday — Imagination covered the 1 1/16 miles in 1:44.55, making this the slowest San Felipe since Soul of the Matter’s 1:44.68 won on a muddy track in 1994.
Most of that slowness happened in the homestretch as Imagination, on the outside, and Wine Me Up, on the inside with jockey Juan Hernandez, soldiered on against the effects of their early struggles or the tiring footing or both.
It became the first of three graded stakes wins for Baffert on Sunday — he won the Santa Anita Handicap with Newgate and the Frank E. Kilroe Mile with Du Jour within the next 65 minutes — as well as his ninth San Felipe victory.
And it made Imagination (who paid $3.80) the fourth Baffert horse to win a stakes race in this 3-year-old season, joining Nysos, Muth and Wynstock.
But none is eligible for the May 4 Kentucky Derby because of Churchill Downs’ continuing ban of Baffert stemming from Medina Spirit’s disqualification from his 2021 Derby victory for a medication violation.
Instead, Baffert’s best will jump into the Triple Crown in the May 18 Preakness.
Imagination, a son of Into Mischief who sold for $1.05 million as a yearling to coowners SF Racing, Starlight Racing and Madaket Stables, is a colt on the rise after winning
his stakes debut in his fifth start. Wine Me Up, by Vino Rosso and owned by Mike Pegram and partners, ran well, too, and narrowly missed his first stakes win in five tries.
Baffert called Imagination a “slow developer.”
“We’re trying to develop these horses,” Baffert said, “so it was good for both of them.”
Dettori rides Newgate to win in Big ’Cap
Dettori rode Newgate into the winner’s circle after the Santa Anita Handicap on Sunday, turned to people he knew, pumped his fists and shouted: “I won the Big ’Cap! I won the Big ’Cap!”
The jockey was saying a mouthful about a classic horse race that is widely thought to be in decline thanks to increasing competition from other winter events for heavyweight thoroughbred talent.
Dettori, the 53-year-old Italian, has won most of the great races on Earth, races that pay seven-figure purses and crown champions. But winning the $400,000, Grade I Santa Anita Handicap for the first time meant the world to him.
Rallying from fifth in a field of seven, Newgate and Dettori got up to win by a head over 22-1 front-runner Subsanador and pay $8.40.
Newgate completed a natural hat trick of graded stakes on the day for trainer Bob Baffert, who earlier won the $300,000, Grade II San Felipe Stakes with Imagination ($3.80) and Dettori, and the Grade I, $300,000 Frank E. Kilroe Mile on turf with Du Jour ($8:40) and Flavien Prat.
Baffert-trained Reincarnate ran third in the Big ’Cap. Phil D’amato’s Newgrange, 3-1 favorite, faded to sixth in the seven-horse field after chasing Subsanador from the outside early.
The afternoon’s final stakes, the Grade II Buena Vista for fillies and mares going one mile on grass, was won by front-running Ruby Nell ($3.60) and Edwin Maldonado for trainer Richard Mandella.
Big ’Cap day drew an onsite crowd of 16,581 and total wagering of $16.4 million after the card was postponed a day because of Saturday’s heavy rain.
The Big ’Cap triumph was the sixth for Baffert, who has won most of America’s great races.
“It is such a historical race,” Baffert said of the race, the nation’s first to carry a $100,000 purse when it debuted in 1935, with a roster of superstar winners starting with Seabiscuit in 1940, “and just to win it, for our team and with Frankie Dettori, it really makes it that much more special.”
Four-year-old Newgate, who, like San Vicente winner Imagination is by Into Mischief, won his first stakes since the 2023 Robert Lewis Stakes. Back from an 11-month layoff, he ran second in an optional-claiming sprint and the San Pasqual Stakes to set him up for his first Grade I win.
Newgate is the seventh consecutive Big ’Cap winner who went into the starting gate without a Grade I on his resume.
But statistics like that don’t diminish the race in the eyes of winners like Dettori.
“When I was a kid here in the late ‘80s,” said Dettori, who rode at Santa Anita as an apprentice before spending the heart of his career in Europe, “there were 60,000 here to see Ferdinand and Alysheba, and you couldn’t move.”
He was talking about a 1988 duel of Kentucky Derby winners in which Alysheba and Chris Mccarron beat Ferdinand and Bill Shoemaker by a half-length in front of, the records show, 70,432 at Santa Anita.
“To win it, I couldn’t ask for anything more,” Dettori said. “It is a big feather in my cap.”
On a track listed as fast but still drying out from Friday’s and Saturday’s storm, the 1 1/4 miles took 2:03.49, the slowest Big ’Cap in nearly 50 years.
It looked as if Subsanador, John Sadler’s Argentine import, would hang on under Hector Berrios — until the final strides.
“I followed Victor (Espinoza, on Newgrange) and I sat pretty low until the quarter pole,” Dettori said. “I took my horse to the outside. I thought I would get to the line OK, and in fairness Subsanador gave me a good fight.
“The last 20 yards we got in front, and I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe that I had done it.”