A return, a first
Baffert, Md.-based Salzman arrive from different worlds
As a gaggle of reporters surrounded Bob Baffert to hear what the Hall of Fame trainer had to say after a year away from the Triple Crown series, John Salzman Jr. went about his business in the background.
Anyone who has followed thoroughbred racing over the past three decades knows Baffert, the white-haired maestro who’s won the Preakness Stakes seven times but was suspended from last year’s Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes because of a medication violation that disqualified Medina Spirit from his 2021 Derby victory.
Salzman is in his first Preakness at age 59, hoping Coffeewithchris, fifth in his last start at Laurel Park, can defy the odds. He’s known to few people outside the intimate circle of Maryland racing, but he’ll proudly tell you that unlike the titans of his profession, he and his wife, Marla, care personally for every horse in their barn.
Triple Crown races have always brought together strange bedfellows, the blue bloods who seem to show up with another superstar every year and the humble horsemen who might get one shot in a lifetime. Baffert and Salzman represented that dichotomy on the morning before the 2023 Preakness. Different though they might be, they’ll both take their best shot to topple Derby champion Mage as he tries to take the second jewel in the Triple Crown.
First Mission scratched: A small Preakness field got smaller Friday morning when Godolphin racing announced First Mission, a 5-2 second choice in the morning line, would not run because of a problem with his left hind ankle.
“There was just a little concern by the 1/ ST racing veterinarian team,” Michael Banahan, Godolphin’s director of bloodstock said
in a news release from the Maryland Jockey Club. “They thought maybe it was a minor issue with the left hind ankle. You just really couldn’t do proper diagnostics on-site, on the track. … He was doing great at Pimlico. But that’s the way it goes.”
With First Mission out, the seven-horse field is the smallest for the Preakness since 1986.
Baffert back: Mage has been the star at Pimlico since Sunday, when he stepped off a van from Kentucky. But on the last morning before race day, he had to share the stage with Baffert, who’s preparing a horse for a Triple Crown race for the first time since Medina Spirit finished third in the 2021 Preakness. It’s unclear how Baffert thinks that horse, National Treasure, will perform in the Preakness. Nothing in the colt’s background — one win in five career starts — suggests he’s the next 3-year-old star to come from the trainer’s California barn.
“He looked fine,” Baffert said after he watched National Treasure, now a 3-1 second choice in the morning line, gallop over the Pimlico dirt. He had kind words for Mage, describing the Derby winner as “a nice horse, a really good horse.”
The trainer, not his Preakness contender, was the chief story Friday. Though he greeted colleagues and well-wishers with breezy words and his usual grin, he seemed less eager to hold court with reporters than he had during past visits to Pimlico.
“I like coming here with a really good horse; I like coming here with the Derby winner,” he said, the closest he came to addressing his absence in 2022.
For a quarter-century, Baffert was racing’s most telegenic star, a relentless winner who took two Triple Crowns after no trainer had won even one for 37 years. In February of last year, however, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission stripped Medina Spirit of his 2021 Derby title because he tested positive for the anti-inflammatory drug betamethasone after the race. The commission suspended Baffert for 90 days, on top of a two-year suspension announced by Churchill Downs, home of the Derby.
Those penalties made him a leading character in a gloomier story — the racing industry’s elusive quest to reduce medication violations that have undermined public confidence in elite trainers and horses.
Baffert has said he was unfairly vilified for treating Medina Spirit with an ointment that was permitted for therapeutic use but not allowed on race day. On Friday, however, he did not discuss the Derby disqualification or the legal battles that ensued as he fought his suspension. He was back in Baltimore with a fit horse, and that was all he cared to say.
Salzman’s training life, by contrast, has unfolded far away from the Triple Crown races and their attendant controversies. From his base in Laurel, he tries to buy yearlings when they’re just flashing signs of racing potential, and he’s happy to sell them for a profit as they approach their primes. He’s a second-generation Maryland horseman, whose father, John Sr., trained the Hall of Fame filly Xtra Heat. But working with star 3-year-olds simply is not part of Salzman’s day-to-day.
“I’m living the dream right now,” he said. “But it’s also a bit much, the cameras everywhere. It’s just a matter of getting used to it.”
He usually keeps about 10 to 12 horses in his barn, right next to the one where his father still works.
His brother, Tim, who’s fighting back from cancer surgery, is also in the family trade. Trainers such as Todd Pletcher and Brad Cox might have started from similar spots, but they’re now responsible for scores of horses held by multiple heavyweight owners across several states.
“My wife does all the feeding at the barn every morning,” Salzman said. “I’m there every day. We might take a Sunday off to go fishing, but I’m very hands on, whereas these guys, they’ve got 80, maybe 100 horses, and there’s no way they can do that. My hands are on my horses every day, and that’s the way I like it.”
Coffeewithchris taking next steps: Salzman began to think big about Coffeewithchris after the Maryland-bred gelding won the Feb. 18 Miracle Wood Stakes at Laurel and then handled a 1 trip in the March 18 Private Terms Stakes.
He hoped for a repeat performance in the April 15 Federico Tesio Stakes, where victory would afford Coffeewithchris an automatic entry to the Preakness.
“He just kept showing me that he wanted to go a little farther,” Salzman said. “And we just kept taking the next step.”
But Coffeewithchris finished fifth in the Tesio, and Salzman, who owns the horse in partnership with Massachusetts residents Fred Wasserloos and Anthony Geruso, thought he’d probably run him in New Jersey next. Upon further reflection, he decided there was more than met the eye to Coffeewithchris’ effort.
He lost the Tesio by just 2 lengths despite a race setup that did not favor him and came out “kicking and squealing” with energy the next day. So Salzman figured why not try the Preakness, “the next legitimate spot for him here in Maryland.”