Baffert poised for double Triple

ELMONT, N.Y. – There was a moment not long after American Pharoah won the Triple Crown three years ago when trainer Bob Baffert and his long-time assistant Jim Barnes were alone back at the barn, starting to savor what they had just accomplished.

“What do we do now?” Baffert said to Barnes.

“Like Robert Redford in ‘The Candidate,’ ” Baffert said recently, referring to the 1972 movie in which Redford’s character is voted senator, but wonders, in the final scene, what comes next. “He won. And then it’s, what now?”

For Baffert, it has been another bid for a Triple Crown. Justify, who already has won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, on Saturday in the Belmont Stakes here at Belmont Park will attempt to become racing’s 13th Triple Crown winner, and the second for Baffert. Only one other trainer, Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, has won the Triple Crown twice, with Gallant Fox in 1930 and Omaha in 1935.

Victory on Saturday would be another signpost that Baffert is amassing the greatest training record in the history of the Triple Crown. He has won the Derby five times, one shy of the official record held by Ben Jones. He has won the Preakness seven times, equaling the record held by R. Wyndham Walden, who plied his trade more than a century ago. And a Belmont victory on Saturday would be the third in the race for Baffert, which would put him alone at the top of the all-time Triple Crown race wins list, with 15.

But Baffert’s Triple Crown race success is even more impressive when his record in the Derby and Preakness is compared to anyone else.

All five of Baffert’s Derby winners, including American Pharoah and Justify, came back to win the Preakness. That is unprecedented. Of the 17 other trainers who have won the Derby at least twice, the only other trainer with a perfect record of Derby winners who were able to come back and win the Preakness is Henry Forrest, with his pair of Kauai King (1966) and Forward Pass (1968).

How hard is it to even repeat in the Preakness with a Derby winner? Consider that such great trainers as Laz Barrera, Lucien Laurin, Horatio Luro, and Charlie Whittingham all went 1 for 2 with Derby winners in the Preakness, and LeRoy Jolley, Carl Nafzger, Todd Pletcher, Woody Stephens, and Nick Zito each went 0 for 2 in the Preakness with their Derby winners. Every one of those trainers – with the exception of Pletcher, who is not yet eligible – is in the Hall of Fame.

Baffert is setting standards in the Triple Crown not before seen in this sport, records that likely will be looked upon decades from now the way the current era looks back at someone like Fitzsimmons.

It’s something Baffert refuses to wrap his head around.

“That’s like comparing Babe Ruth to Big Papi,” Baffert said, referring to former baseball slugger David Ortiz. “That was a different era. I’m just trying to enjoy the moment, not get caught up in it. When I was young, coming up, I’d look at guys like Lukas and Whittingham and be in awe of them. LeRoy Jolley, he was the man. Maybe some of the younger guys will say they’d like to be like Bob Baffert.”

Others can take up the slack.

“He’s the best horse trainer in America,” Dale Romans, who sends out Free Drop Billy against Justify in the Belmont on Saturday, said on a recent national teleconference. “He always puts the horse first, like when he scratched American Pharoah before the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.”

American Pharoah still won the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male, but a bigger payoff came the following year, when American Pharoah ended a 37-year Triple Crown drought, the longest since it was first swept in 1919.

Since then, the Triple Crown has been won in clusters, with three in the 1930s, four in the 1940s, and three in the 1970s. In the 1940s, two Triple Crowns went to the powerful Calumet Farm, whose horses were trained by Ben Jones and his son Jimmy.

Ben Jones was the trainer of Whirlaway, the 1941 Triple Crown winner, with Jimmy as his assistant. Jimmy trained Citation, the 1948 Triple Crown winner, for 43 of his 45 career starts. But the week of the Derby in 1948, Citation ran twice – in the Derby Trial on April 27, and the Derby on May 1 – in the name of Ben Jones, a clerical move made to give Ben Jones a chance to win his fourth Derby, which would tie him for the all-time record at the time with “Derby Dick” Thompson.

Citation of course won that race, and Ben Jones did go on to win the Derby twice more, in 1949 and 1952, so he holds the official record of six Derby wins. Take away Citation, though, and Baffert is his equal, with five Derby wins.

The switch with Citation for the 1948 Derby rankled Jimmy Jones, who won the Derby twice in later years, in 1957 and 1958.

“That was a battleground for us. That wasn’t right,” Jones told Daily Racing Form’s Jay Hovdey in story published in June 2001, three months before Jones’s death at age 94.

As a result, Citation is listed in official records as trained by Ben Jones for the Derby, but Jimmy for the Preakness and Belmont. So, Fitzsimmons currently stands alone as the only trainer to win the Triple Crown twice. That’s the rare company Baffert could join on Saturday.

Baffert went into the Belmont three times before American Pharoah with chances to win the Triple Crown. Both Silver Charm in 1997 and Real Quiet in 1998 ran well but narrowly lost, and War Emblem did a face plant at the start of the 2002 Belmont, eliminating what chance he may have had.

Baffert prior to the 1998 Belmont met Jimmy Jones at a Belmont party. “I’ve read up on all those guys, him and his dad. Little guy, really nice,” Baffert recalled of their meeting. “He said, ‘When you have one, you’ll know.’ ”

American Pharoah was that horse. He held up to the rigors of the Triple Crown and polished off the Belmont with a flourish.

“He was a machine,” Baffert said. “Going into the Belmont we knew we had the horse, but you have to prepare yourself for disappointment. We were quietly confident, but you’ve still got to do it.

“This horse, the same way,” Baffert said of Justify, whom he said “has handled everything thrown at him without losing his composure.”

Justify is a big, strong horse who stands 16-3 hands and weighs 1,270 pounds. His physical strength has been a huge benefit during this accelerated rise to the top.

“Races don’t knock him out,” Baffert said.

Their campaigns have been starkly different. American Pharoah was an accomplished 2-year-old who had a lengthy layoff prior to his 3-year-old season. Justify didn’t even get to the races until Feb. 18. He would be the first Triple Crown winner to have never raced at age 2.

They required different approaches in terms of their pre-Derby preparation, and a different skill set from their trainer to navigate them to this point.

“I feel privileged to train these horses,” Baffert said. “We must be doing something right. Having a great horse like this makes it a lot easier. And I’m proud to know that when we get a good one, we know how to handle it.”