For Baffert, the Derby thrill never gets old

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The first time trainer Bob Baffert ran a horse in the Kentucky Derby, Cavonnier lost by a nose and Baffert was crestfallen, wondering if he’d ever get another chance.

As it turned out, he won the Derby the very next year, and the year after that, too. And in the two decades since, Baffert has been the most successful trainer in both the Derby and the Triple Crown, equaling and breaking records along the way.

When Justify swept the Triple Crown last year, three years after Baffert won the Triple Crown with American Pharoah, Baffert became only the second trainer to train two Triple Crown winners, equaling the feat of Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons with Gallant Fox and Omaha in 1930 and 1935.

Justify’s victory in the Belmont gave Baffert his 15th in a Triple Crown race, making him the winningest trainer in the series, with one more than D. Wayne Lukas, the trainer whose Grindstone hung a nose on Cavonnier in the 1996 Derby.

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Justify was the fifth Derby winner for Baffert. He now ranks second all time among trainers, behind only Ben Jones, who is credited with six wins. If Baffert can capture this year’s Derby with one of his three entrants – Game Winner, Improbable, or Roadster – he and Jones will be tied.

It’s not something Baffert is dwelling on, though it has been a repeated line of inquiry since his arrival at Churchill Downs over the weekend.

“It’s a different era,” Baffert pointed out the other morning outside his Churchill Downs barn. “I hate thinking about that. It’s a super-jinx. I never thought I’d win one Derby. I’ve been lucky enough to win five.”

The game has changed since Jones and mighty Calumet Farm ruled racing. The Triple Crown, especially the Derby, has become much more of a focal point for racing, which has become much more of a big-event sport in recent decades. The Derby now has a maximum of 20 starters, and this year, as in most recent years, it will be at or near capacity when they spring from the gate.

It’s also hard to compare the Jones and Baffert eras in terms of opportunity.

Jones primarily trained homebreds, but what homebreds they were, first for Woolford Farm and then for Calumet, which had the dominant stallion of the time in Bull Lea. A major trainer’s stable was far smaller than today, and fewer horses were needed to fill cards owing to the hardiness of the animals. In 1938, the year Triple Crown winner Whirlaway – Jones’s second Derby winner – was born, there were 5,696 registered foals in North America.

Baffert primarily trains horses acquired at auction as yearlings and 2-year-olds, so there’s more choice, but there’s also plenty of competition for those horses among other trainers and their clientele. Between his barns at Santa Anita and Los Alamitos, Baffert has scores of horses, far more than Jones ever would train at one time but fewer than some of Baffert’s contemporaries. The foal crops for the year Justify was born and for this year’s horses now of Derby age both were around 21,000. It’s like comparing apples to watermelons.

What is somewhat similar is their background, and certainly their success. Jones was born in tiny Parnell, Mo., in 1882, and in 1890 he was one of just 267 residents recorded in that town’s census. Baffert hails from Nogales, Ariz., where he was born in 1953 and where in 1960 he was one of its 7,286 residents.

Jones was 55 when he had his first runner and winner in the Derby, with Lawrin in 1938. It became habit forming. His six wins came from just 11 starters through 1952. One of those wins, in 1948 with Citation, caused friction with Jones and his son, Jimmy, who followed his father into the Hall of Fame.

It was Jimmy Jones who was the original trainer of Citation, but Citation ran in the Derby in Ben’s name in order to give Ben Jones a chance to equal what at the time was the record for Derby wins by a trainer, four, by Derby Dick Thompson. Citation swept the Triple Crown, with Jimmy Jones returning as the trainer of record for the Preakness and Belmont.

Baffert was 43 when he had his first Derby runner, 44 when he had his first winner. His five winners have come from 29 starters. His strike rate is superior to a contemporary like Lukas, who is 4 for 49, and is similar to Thompson’s, who won four times with 26 starters from 1920-37.

Baffert and Jones are two of just six trainers who have won the Derby three times or more, and two of only four trainers who have won the race at least four times.

“At this stage of my life,” said Baffert, 66, “I love the challenge. It keeps me going, to see if I can do it again. It’s all about the challenge.”

Last year, the challenge with Justify was taking a horse who didn’t even start until Feb. 18 to the Derby winner’s circle, and then the Triple Crown.

“That was a challenge,” Baffert said. “I had to go back on all my experience.”

It also helped that Baffert had in Justify, as he did with American Pharoah, a horse he described as a “superior racehorse.”

He has not uttered that phrase this year about any of his three runners. All three are solid, owning Grade 1 wins, and all have presented unique challenges, but none looks like he is clearly the class of this field.

“There’s a lot of parity,” Baffert said of this year’s Derby.

Game Winner is the most accomplished of his trio, being last year’s champion 2-year-old male, with his victories including the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, which was run at Churchill Downs. “He’s tough, like Silver Charm,” Baffert said, comparing Game Winner to his first Derby winner. “They put up a fight.”

Improbable was the last of the three to get to the races, and though he hasn’t won this year, he most recently was second in the Arkansas Derby to the likely race favorite, the Richard Mandella-trained Omaha Beach.

“He just glides over the track. He’s so athletic,” Baffert said. “If you need to go through a hole, he can get you there.”

Roadster was the most precocious, a colt Baffert touted last summer, not long after Justify had won the Triple Crown. But Roadster’s path here included throat surgery last fall and then being nursed through quarter cracks earlier this year. The Santa Anita Derby was his lone chance to get points for the Kentucky Derby, and he came through with a win.

“He’s lightly made, refined,” Baffert said.

Three different colts with three different constitutions and different needs in terms of getting them to the Derby. And here they are. That’s why his clients hire Baffert. This is the stage on which his owners want to play, and Baffert wants to keep producing.

“There’s nothing better when you win than seeing the faces on the owners, the excitement,” Baffert said. “To me, it’s a joy to see them that way, so giddy. It’s a great feeling. Huge satisfaction.

“I want all my owners to feel that. It’s priceless. It’s why we beat ourselves up doing this. The greatest feeling in the world is to win the Kentucky Derby.”