Justify’s Derby win is Baffert’s best feat
LOUISVILLE – Around this time every spring, a new crop of 2-year-olds arrives at the Bob Baffert barn in Southern California. In a given year, there may be as many as 30 or 40, nearly all of them regally bred and many of them purchased at auctions in the high six- or seven-figure range by owners who dream of winning the Kentucky Derby.
From there, it’s basically a numbers game. Some of them will end up on the Derby trail and perhaps make it to Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May. Others will be too slow to develop or get derailed by injuries. Some of them inevitably won’t be able to run a lick.
“Right now we’re getting these 2year-olds coming in, and you’re thinking, which one can take me back to the big show?” Baffert said last week. “It’s like a coach saying, ‘Hey I just got the three top recruits coming in for next year and we’re going to be good. That’s what keeps me motivated.”
Baffert, 65, has won the Kentucky Derby five times after Justify’s triumph on Saturday. Remarkably, he has done it for five different owners, all of whom have recognized his talent in getting 3-year-olds ready for this particular, challenging race.
While any trainer would tell you having the right horse is essential, and the volume of talented colts Baffert gets gives him a head start on the process, the job he did to get Justify in the winner’s circle Saturday will go down as perhaps the greatest training feat in his career.
As Zayat Stables racing manager Justin Zayat tweeted Saturday night: “I’ve said it for years and I’ll say it again. Bob Baffert greatest trainer of all time. I don’t think it’s even close anymore! The man knows his horses inside out, his attention to detail is second to none #GOAT.”
Though Zayat might be biased – Baffert, after all, helped deliver him a Triple Crown in 2015 with American Pharoah – the evidence for his place in history is mounting.
Baffert’s fifth Derby win moves him into second place all time, one behind Ben Jones who trained for Calumet Farm during its era of dominance in the 1940s. His next Triple Crown race win, which could very well come at the Preakness in two weeks, will tie him with D. Wayne Lukas for the most all time at 14. His 14 wins in Breeders’ Cup races are second behind Lukas’ 20.
But more than just the numbers, Justify’s performance in the Derby is yet another exclamation point on a career that already added a few in recent years with American Pharoah breaking the 37year Triple Crown drought in 2015 and Arrogate bursting onto the scene in the summer of 2016, winning the Travers (the biggest post-Triple Crown race for 3-year-olds) in August and then the Breeders’ Cup Classic against older horses including the great California Chrome.
Until Saturday, those were widely considered Baffert’s most impressive training jobs. But anyone who understands the game and the history of the Kentucky Derby would have to put Justify’s win right at the top.
A mere 76 days before the Derby, Justify was little more than the No. 3 horse in the second race at Santa Anita, restricted to horses who had never won a race. Though there had been buzz on the backstretch and around the Baffert barn about what kind of horse this could be based on his morning workouts, nobody thinks a horse making its first start on Feb. 18 is going to end up in the Kentucky Derby. More than 100 years of history says there just isn’t enough time to get ready to run 11⁄4 miles, which is beyond what many of these horses are capable of even under the best of circumstances.