Baffert rolls out another G1 winner
The CashCall Futurity winner’s name represents the chance of anyone stopping Bob Baffert’s assembly line of Kentucky Derby prospects soon. Improbable.
The Hall of Fame trainer won the former Hollywood Park race at Los Alamitos for the fifth consecutive year and 11th time overall Saturday. Improbable stalked the pace early and blew past Baffert stablemate Mucho Gusto in the stretch for a five-length victory going a mile and sixteenth.
Improbable has many of the same owners as Justify, and like the retired Horse of the Year contender by Scat Daddy, the latest Baffert star is a son of a deceased sire, City Zip.
Baffert and jockey Drayden Van Dyke each doubled up in Grade 1 races for 2-year-olds, later joining forces in the Starlet with Chasing Yesterday, a Tapit filly and half-sister to 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. Chasing Yesterday won by a head over 30-1 longshot Enaya Alrabb, who edged the Baffert-trained Mother Mother by a neck, also at 1 1/16 miles.
Baffert’s success in the LosAl Futurity is all the more remarkable in that neither of his recent Triple Crown winners entered the race. American Pharoah was resting in 2014 after a pair of Grade 1 victories in California gave him the male juvenile championship from three starts. Justify was two months away from debuting in February 2018 and becoming the first Kentucky Derby winner unraced at 2 since 1882.
As regards 2019 Triple Crown prospects, Baffert’s roster is deeper than that of Duke’s basketball team with McDonald’s All-Americans. Game Winner, an unbeaten Candy Ride colt, is the presumptive male juvenile champion with the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile among his three Grade 1 victories. Coliseum, a Tapit colt owned by Godolphin Racing, impressed in a Del Mar maiden debut going seven furlongs faster than Mucho Gusto winning a Grade 3 race later on the card.
Game Winner was the 5-1 individual favorite in the first Kentucky Derby Future Wager, held over Thanksgiving weekend. Coliseum checked in at 10-1 and Improbable at 17-1 with some other Baffert horses among the 22 individual selections. Favored at 6-5 was the mutuel field, which last year included Justify in Pool 1.
Trying to keep his Derby contenders apart, Baffert is likely to consider Oaklawn Park’s $150,000 Smarty Jones, a one-mile race he won last year with the ill-fated Mourinho. Previously a Monday feature on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Smarty Jones now anchors Oaklawn’s opening-day card Friday, Jan. 25.