USA TODAY International Edition
Baffert shows why he’s a great Derby trainer
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 might 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 2-yearolds 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 Saturday. Remarkably, he has done it for five different owners.
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 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.
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 37-year 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-yearolds) 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 that 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.
But Baffert had an ambitious plan to thread the needle: Win the debut, come back in three weeks in a 1-mile allowance, then go into the deep water in the Santa Anita Derby.
“This colt was really special as a yearling,” said Elliott Walden, the president and CEO of racing for WinStar Farm, which bought Justify at auction for $500,000. “I have been asked about how we bought him a lot. He just stood out. Like Bob said, he’s kind of like LeBron. And I got excited when Bob told me that he was going to run him — and he had a plan to get to the Derby.”
At that point, Baffert thought Justify would be his second-stringer for the Triple Crown races. Up to that point, McKinzie had been the star of his barn, winning the Grade 1 Los Alamitos Futurity in December and a Derby prep in January. But on March 10, McKinzie had to be taken out of training because of a bruised hock.
“In this business, if you have a good 3year-old and you get that call, it just rips your soul,” he said. “It’s tough. It’s tough. In this business, it’s a great sport. It’s a lot of fun. But there’s some times you have to really — you have to go through it. The only thing that made me really get through it, I knew I had this big red son of a gun sitting in the barn that looks like he could be pretty good himself.”
That son of a gun was Justify, and in any other hands we might not have even known the name today, which is a remarkable stroke of luck considering WinStar sends its 3-year-olds to a variety of trainers. Although Walden said he couldn’t recall exactly why Justify went to Baffert, the partners WinStar took on in 2016 including the China Horse Club conglomerate wanted some horses to go out West with Baffert.
That wasn’t just a good decision — it turned out to be a historic one.