Justify trainer rides Triple Crown success
Bob Baffert is the closest thing to a mainstream star in horse racing as he looks to sweep series again.
ELMONT, N.Y. – He used to get mistaken sometimes for wrestler Ric Flair. When he ran a horse in Dubai once, a woman came up to him thinking he was televangelist Benny Hinn. • And sometimes, when he’s in airports or restaurants, Bob Baffert is simply “the horse guy” who people recognize by the white hair and sunglasses. • But after two decades of success in the Triple Crown series and poised to sweep it for the second time this weekend with Justify, a 65-year-old trainer has become the closest thing horse racing has to a marketable, mainstream star. • Fortunately for this sport, which basically gets one shot a year to be relevant on a national level, Baffert is more than happy to oblige.
Whether he’s throwing out the first pitch at a Mets game, bringing Bill Belichick to the Kentucky Derby, being a guest picker on ESPN’s College GameDay or spinning metaphors about LeBron James for reporters who don’t cover horse racing often, Baffert is the most relatable figure in a sport whose popularity has waned considerably outside of the Triple Crown.
“He can articulate as well as anyone why we love horse racing and why the Triple Crown is so important,” National Thoroughbred Racing Association president Alex Waldrop said. “And he’s as recognizable as anyone in Thoroughbred racing today.”
Even by Baffert’s standards, the run he’s been on lately almost defies logic. And it has helped turn him from someone who gets recognized every day around the racetrack to the only person involved in the sport who really moves the needle in any other context.
That kind of familiarity is crucial for horse racing, where the actual stars don’t hang around very long in the modern era. American Pharoah ran three times after the Triple Crown before heading off to a stud career. Justify, whose breeding rights have reportedly been sold for $60 million, could very well be on a similar plan for 2018.
“It’s not unlike one-and-done college basketball players,” said Ray Paulick, publisher of the racing website Paulickreport.com. “They play one year for John Calipari and they’re gone. The best horses now are like one-and-dones.”
In the same way Calipari remains the constant, familiar presence on the Kentucky sideline, fans are used to turning on big horse races and seeing Baffert.
After bursting onto the scene with eight wins out of the 18 Triple Crown races between 1997 and 2002, he went through a fairly significant run of bad luck over the next dozen years. Some of his top prospects got injured, many of them just weren’t good enough, and others such as Bodemeister probably would have won the 2012 Kentucky Derby if not for a suicidal speed duel.
But since 2015, everything has seemingly been rolling in Baffert’s direction. Almost immediately after American Pharoah ended the Triple Crown curse in 2015, he landed another monster in his barn the next year with Arrogate, who didn’t develop quickly enough to run in the Derby but whose wins in the Travers, Breeders’ Cup Classic, Pegasus World Cup and Dubai World Cup might have been as impressive as any American horse in recent memory.
If Justify wins the Belmont, it will make Baffert the second trainer to have multiple Triple Crown winners (“Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons trained Gallant Fox and Omaha in the 1930s) and break a tie with D. Wayne Lukas for most wins in the series overall at 15.
Even if Justify can’t get it done, Baffert’s record is unassailable. Though he might not be as revolutionary of a figure as Lukas, who came from quarter horse racing and totally reimagined the business of training horses, Baffert has carried the torch as an affable, accessible figure who seems just as comfortable hanging out with Belichick (as he did at the Kentucky Derby and Preakness this year), befriending rapper Post Malone or appearing on the Today show as he does in the barn.
“Trainers were kinda those guys that sat on a bale of hay chewing on some straw and uttering some countrified bromides about racing, and they were generally very tight-lipped,” said Tom Durkin, who called the Triple Crown races from 2001 to 2011. “That was just the way they did business, and then when Lukas came around and then Baffert, they were out there a little more. Lukas is flashy. Baffert is hip.”
Or, at least, as hip as horse racing can be. Fortunately for a sport that might be seen by some as stuffy or inaccessible — some of its other top-level trainers tend to prefer anonymity — Baffert at least seems like he enjoys letting his personality show. That, as much as anything, is why so many people in and outside of the industry will be rooting Saturday for Baffert to win the Triple Crown again.
“This is what I love,” he said. “This is what I enjoy, and I think any time any of us, trainer, jockey, it’s our duty to promote the sport. Everybody’s going to be watching (the Triple Crown bid), so we want to let them know what a beautiful sport it is and how well we care for the animals and how beautiful the animals are. So I try to help. I just love the sport so much, and it’s put me in positions where I’ve been able to meet presidents, took me to places where I never thought I’d ever be.”