Can Kentucky Derby favorite justify the hype?
Justify would have to buck history to win, but trainer Baffert thought he was special from Day 1
LOUISVILLE – Upon my arrival at Churchill Downs this week, it took all of
10 minutes before a longtime racetrack guy casually dropped the notion that Kentucky Derby favorite Justify might be another American Pharoah.
Now, it’s important to understand one thing about the racetrack. Hyperbole about racing’s Next Great Star is as easy to find as an empty beer cup or a story about almost hitting the Pick Six. In the 28 years I’ve been handicapping the Derby, the litany of superhorses-inwaiting who flopped on race day is long and undistinguished.
In his 1992 pre-Derby column in Sports Illustrated, the late, great William Nack wrote: “A score of continental horsemen regard the French-trained colt Arazi as the most brilliant racehorse to appear in Europe in the last two decades, and not a few of their American counterparts view him as the second coming of Secretariat.”
He finished eighth.
In 2005, these words were written in The New York Times about George Steinbrenner’s Bellamy Road, who had won the Wood Memorial prep race by
171⁄ lengths: “Bellamy Road, at 5-2 in the
2 morning line, is being projected as a one-of-a-kind horse perfectly positioned to capture a once-in-a-lifetime race. His head-down, freight-train-style morning gallops have been compared with those of the great Seattle Slew.”
Bellamy Road stuck his nose in front at the quarter-pole before fading precipitously to seventh place.
That kind of thing should breed plenty of skepticism about grand proclamations for 3-year-olds, particularly one as lightly raced as Justify, who is a mere 3
for-3 and didn’t even run as a 2-yearold, which every Derby winner since Apollo in 1882 has done.
But at Churchill Downs this week, the hype around Justify is barely being harnessed. As he made his debut on the track Tuesday after flying in from California the previous afternoon, dozens of reporters and cameras followed him. The mob of people watching his post-gallop bath outside of Barn 33 has dwarfed the crowd around any other horse in the race. And at the post-position draw a few hours later, longtime oddsmaker Mike Battaglia made him the 3-1 favorite.
“This was easy,” Battaglia said. “After the Santa Anita Derby, it looked to me like this was the favorite.”
There’s little doubt about how dominating Justify’s effort was that day, even though his final margin of victory over Bolt D’Oro was just 3 lengths. He toyed with the field, leading through a comfortable half mile and then pulling away at the top of the stretch with very little urging from jockey Mike Smith, who basically put him on cruise control for the final eighth of a mile.
But even before that win, which confirmed for everybody what kind of talent Bob Baffert had on his hands, the real insiders were touting Justify as the potential “it” horse as early as his first race on Feb. 18 at Santa Anita against other maidens, which are horses who have yet to win.
Randy Moss, the longtime analyst for NBC Sports, called it the best career debut he’d ever seen and instantly emailed his broadcast partner Jerry Bailey, the retired Hall of Fame jockey, touting Justify as the potential Derby winner.
“I wasn’t the only one who thought that. It was no great observation,” Moss said. “It was fantastic by the clock. It was an amazing race visually. I think most people that follow it closely were blown away by how he looked.”
And yet Justify might really need to be as good as American Pharoah to overcome the circumstances working against him in this race. While the socalled “Curse of Apollo” is overstated, the fundamentals of the Kentucky Derby haven’t changed in many years. To win as a 3-year-old at 11⁄ miles requires
4 not only good luck, but stamina and physical toughness to overcome a rugged 20-horse field.
Generally speaking, horses that have a foundation of racing at age 2 are at an advantage in all those areas, giving them more preparation at a foundation of fitness to run such a long way at Churchill Downs. Justify’s races are not only few in number, but they’ve all been exceptionally easy for him, which can be a major negative if he gets jostled around in traffic or has to look another horse in the eye, not knowing how to react.
Even American Pharoah, who was lightly raced by historical standards with just five starts before the 2015 Kentucky Derby, had run three times as a 2year-old and showed his brilliance that December in the Grade 1 Front-Runner Stakes going 11⁄ miles against top com
16 petition.
Then again, if anyone can get a horse ready for the Derby on a non-traditional timeline, it’s probably Baffert. Though he gets a new crop of high-priced horse flesh in his barn every summer, it’s not an accident he’s won the Derby four times.
And when Justify arrived in his barn last December, with all the big 2-yearold races already passed, it didn’t take Baffert long to start thinking he could still make it to the Derby with him.
“When I worked him the first time at Santa Anita, he did something really incredible in the morning,” Baffert said. “The time wasn’t that fast, but just the way he did it.
“There’s nothing like knowing you have a horse like that and you go, man. You just know this is the goods right here. This is the goods.”
But Justify has to be good on Saturday — really good — to, ahem, justify the amount of hype he’s getting this week. There are decades of history suggesting he probably isn’t. But one way or another, we’re going to find out.